


Picaresque

by ImpOfPerversity



Category: Baroque Cycle - Neal Stephenson, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-10
Updated: 2004-08-27
Packaged: 2018-11-12 10:39:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11160195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpOfPerversity/pseuds/ImpOfPerversity





	1. Chapter 1

  
Supine and (uncharacteristically) silent, sweating quietly in the shade beneath one of the less wizened and wind-bent trees in this part of Turk’s Island, Jack Shaftoe was confident of at least half an hour’s uninterrupted indolence before his absence was noted and he was rousted back to work.

He used the time to compose a letter back home, to his brother, Bob. Sadly, since Jack was entirely lacking in both writing matériel and, indeed, literacy, this letter was indisputably futile; but it certainly passed the time, and there had been distressingly few times in Jack’s life when he could honestly say that, in a comparison between his current situation in life and his brother’s, his could be described in such a way that it seemed to come out on top.

 _Dear Bob_ , began the hypothetical missive, in a friendly tone.

_Wish you were here, although let’s face it, you’d never have had the gumption to make it this far._

No, strike that, thought Jack, best not to start off on the wrong foot. _Dear Bob._

_The Caribbee is entirely delightful, a veritable haven for those of a Vagabond disposition. As I write to you I’m resting beneath a tree, out of the noonday sun, which never (never, Bob!) fails to shine. That’s right, I’m never cold. Are you in Holland at present, or Blighty? Let’s see, February… ooh, dear, poor Bob. Anyway. Food is astonishingly abundant, falling from trees, the seas are positively fecund, and the island I’m currently based on is crawling with wild goats, which cook up something wonderful. Me and the boys (aye, Tom Flinch and Mick Gully are still with me) have very little to do in return for being well fed and watered. We’re staying in a place down by a white sand beach, fringed in palm trees, Bob, honestly._

_Must go. Take care of yourself, don’t take all that soldiering too seriously now. Have you made Sergeant yet? I may not be back for a while. Yours, Jack._

Jack sighed and rubbed his eyes. The letter, while not entirely false in content, could neither be said to be entirely true. There were definite sins of omission. Such as the fact that this island was in fact a _de facto_ gaol, and he was being held by the British for crimes which, to be sure, he’d certainly planned on committing, but had never actually managed to complete. Which seemed more than nominally unjust to Jack. It was akin to every woman he’d ever met coming up and slapping him for his thoughts alone.

Oh, Lord, how Jack missed women, even the angry ones.

_There are no women here Bob, and I’ve been stuck here for nigh on three months. There’s no alcohol, and they’ll whip you as soon as look at you. If I have to eat another fucking goat… thirty five prisoners here, Bob, and I never want to see any of their filthy, ugly, and unforgivably stupid faces, or hear any of their filthy, ugly and unforgivably stupid stories, ever again. They’re waiting on a new Commodore arriving in Port Royal, and till he does, they’re just stacking us up here, like pigs queuing outside the slaughterhouse, awaiting his word. At this point, Bob, I’m looking forward to the hanging, purely for the entertainment value. Wish you could be there to pull me down quick._

Jack’s reveries of boyhood days in Newgate, himself and Bob selling their services to the condemned (we’ll speed your way for only a shilling each, guv, and we guarantee we won’t let go no matter how hard you may kick us in your final throes), was rudely interrupted by the inevitable summons.

“Shaftoe! Where you at, you lazy cur! Get back here, supply ship’s coming in, you’re all going back home for the afternoon!”

Jack scrambled to his bare feet, this unexpected news generating something that felt disturbingly like excitement to his bored self. Supply ship! Conceivably, something new to look at, or even, heaven forbid, talk to!

“Here, sar’nt! Coming! No goats here, sar’nt!” He ran in the direction of the yell, which seemed to be uphill, toward South Point, and presently emerged from the sparse wood, coming out onto a grassy promontory where the rest of his detail, and their three guards, were already gathered. Sergeant Mosely, a man with what Jack considered to be a particularly unhealthy regard for protocol, was already chaining the rest of the detail together for their return to camp. Jack sighed and stood at the end of the line, waiting for the chain to be threaded through his shackle.

From here, they were afforded a grand view of the approaching ship. Something, for once, moving across the endless ocean that surrounded them, and what was even rarer, something that was actually headed in their direction. There had only been two supply ships so far during Jack’s incarceration, this being the second, and the first had delivered only flour, sugar, potatoes, rum for the guards, and a single convict so ancient and decrepit that he had passed away only a week later. Still, being unstoppably optimistic, Jack harboured hopes that this one would bring him something more diverting.

The ship was rounding the northern headland of the island’s single harbour and only beach, beneath the watchful eye of the garrison’s cannons. This harbour was located in the central curve of the small, fat crescent moon that was Turk’s Island, and tipped at either end with a steep headland. From the beach, the land rose sharply, and the scrubby forest was dotted with a few ramshackle buildings, including the stockade that Mosely referred to as Jack’s home. Beyond this was nothing at all, save trees and goats, until one came to the vertiginous cliffs that formed the outer curve of the island, a crude stockade of nature’s own devising.

Heavy chain now ran through the shackle affixed to Jack’s ankle, leading to that which was ensconced around the leg of his friend Tom Flinch. Clutched in one of Tom’s bloodied hands was the neck of a limp, mid-sized goat.

“Oh, goody,” said Jack with a complete lack of sincerity, “goat tonight.”

“Stop bellyaching,” growled Tom, as the clanking column of men started shuffling down the hill. “Don’t you recall the crossing, you fool, and how grateful you’d have been for a hot spit-roast haunch of any-fucking-thing then?”

“True,” sighed Jack, whose yen for novelty often translated into a less than pleasant tendency to be satisfied only momentarily with anything, regardless of how good and fondly anticipated it might have been to begin with. “And I must say, Tom, your gums are more or less proportional to the rest of your gob, now, so as a diet, this can’t be all bad.”

Tom took a rapid and larger-than-necessary stride with his shackled leg, exerting an exquisitely painful answering tug on Jack’s. “You ain’t no picture either, Shaftoe.”

Jack said nothing. There was nothing proper to be said. It was obviously not a comment for a man to agree with, and neither to dispute. As it happened, Jack was working hard on becoming less of a picture, since a month in Port Royal had proved to him for once and for all that a man who looked clean, youthful, and (according to some) handsome was a man who, by his mere presence, attracted the attentions of most every randy pirate he encountered. Jack had therefore abandoned the unnecessary conceit of washing; had roughly hacked off his shoulder length hair, which now, crusted with salt and faded by sun, crowned him with a spiky halo of straw; and was taking every possible opportunity to sit around in the sun and bake himself slowly into leather. As a result, his unwanted-attention-grabbing blue eyes (along with their black lashes and brows, a legacy of his bog-Irish maternal antecedents) now sat in a face more golden brown than Jack would ever have suspected his English skin of being capable of producing. It simply had to lead to a goodly weatherbeaten aspect soon. His beard was disappointing him though, being too soft still, and tending to congregate on his chin, not doing much to cover the too-youthful flush in his cheeks.

“Ship’s drawing closer, will we beat it in d’you think?”

Jack’s idle comment was overhead by Dudley, one of the less unpleasant of his guards. “Signal flags say they’ve new prisoners,” Dudley informed him, “so all details are to be back and lined up ‘fore they disembark. Want to give a good impression now, don’t we, boys?”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said Jack, “we wouldn’t want anyone to feel unwelcome, sir, or they might wish to return home, and we should have no new friends to play with.” The sniggering of his companions brought a hurt flush to the soldier’s face, and Jack felt momentarily chastened by his own conscience. Use your brain, Jack, don’t bite the few hands that feed. But Jack Shaftoe had never mastered the art of thinking before he spoke. He’d always had his brother to do that for him.

*

Down on the beach, the three details were assembled and lined up, still chained. Their guards, aside from the two stationed up on the hill manning the cannons, were all present, as was the garrison commander, Captain Petrie, who was fussing like a hen, fizzing with the anticipation of this occasion, and who even appeared to have unearthed his best periwig for the occasion. In the harsh afternoon sun, the heavy wig and his dress uniform were bringing him out in a red-faced sweat, which was only exacerbated by his excitement.

The supply ship dropped anchor out in the bay, and forty five pairs of eyes watched in anticipation as the cutter was lowered. Two navy men descended, and several barrels and crates were loaded down. Finally, a single prisoner, hands manacled before him, was sent down to the cutter.

“One,” muttered Jack in disgust. “One!” No more than a couple of days’ diversion at the very best.

And yet, he had to admit as the cutter was rowed into shore, the single new prisoner didn’t look uninteresting. Even from a distance, the newcomer’s kohl-rimmed eyes and vivid clothes marked him as a definite character. He didn’t appear to lack imagination, that much was certain.

The cutter scraped up into the sand, and the sailors hopped out, dragging it further up the beach. The prisoner made no move to alight, but sat in the stern for all the world like a king, patiently awaiting his welcome. Jack looked at Tom and Mick, and they were each, like him, stifling a laugh.

“Get _out_ , Sparrow,” hissed the ranking officer accompanying him, and finally, the newcomer deigned to stand, and descend to the sand. Prisoners and guards alike stared at him in fascination. Thick black hair reached below his shoulders, but was tangled and knotted and threaded with gold and bone. A once-white shirt had some of the most ludicrously excessive sleeves Jack had ever seen, and seemed all the more flamboyant against the slightly-too-small breeches. Around his waist was a florid concoction of sash, and his boots were almost satirical in their sheer piratey-ness. And yet, he seemed little older than Jack himself, and his beard, like Jack’s, failed to cover smooth skinned cheeks; failed to disguise the feline symmetry of his face.

In short, no matter how dull or stupid he might turn out to be when he opened his mouth, Jack at least found him reasonably diverting with it closed.

The prisoner’s guards flanked him, and saluted Captain Petrie.

“Captain, please take delivery of this prisoner, one J. Sparrow, for incarceration until further notice,” said the Lieutenant, in a tone of voice that conveyed, quite clearly, his burning desire to be utterly rid of this prisoner for once and for all.

“Consider it taken, Lieutenant,” said the Captain happily. He was a kindly man, and wanted only to rule his tiny kingdom with fairness and equity. Accordingly, he insisted on addressing each of his prisoners on arrival; hoping always (although currently with little to show for it) that in so doing, he would form a bond of mutual respect with the reformable man inside the hardened criminal.

“Mr Sparrow, my name is Captain Petrie, and I am the commander of this outpost. Sergeant Mosely will acquaint you with our regulations shortly, but they are simple, and I should hope that, with a modicum of respect for them and for my officers, you will not suffer unduly here. This is a small island, and we must all perforce co-exist, which is a far more pleasant prospect if we each undertake to act as civilized men, and obey the rules.”

The Lieutenant, Jack could swear, rolled his eyes at Petrie’s speech. He was clearly not of the same school of gaoler-philosophy. But Sparrow inclined his head at the Captain, fixing him with eyes that were faintly amused, and then said, “Absolutely, Captain, and I’m sure we shall be _fast_ chums in _no_ time.”

There was a tiny hush, four dozen men holding their breath, astonished at such a display of sheer insolence. And yet, Sparrow smiled so disarmingly as he said it, with no trace of sarcasm or bitterness, that good Captain Petrie merely smiled back, and felt himself, for once, pleasantly surprised by one of his charges. Jack could only watch in amazement as the newcomer, with his very first sentence, got away with more cheek than Jack had managed in all his months on Turk’s Island.

“Sergeant, please take Mr Sparrow up to complete the formalities,” Petrie continued. “Slater, Johnson, would you be so good as to help our colleagues here to unload the rest of their deliveries? Gentlemen, I presume you will be overnighting with us? It will be such a pleasure to have your company.”

But the Lieutenant shook his head. “We’ll make another run from the ship, sir, and then be on our way. We’re under orders not to tarry, and we suggest that you take great care with this prisoner. He’s… considered dangerous, and an escape risk.”

That piqued Jack’s interest. He looked again at Sparrow, who was smirking at these words. He certainly didn’t look particularly dangerous. In fact… in fact, damnation! he looked like yet another who would be likely to bother any man who happened to be clean, youthful, and even marginally handsome (the former of which, Jack could certainly no longer lay claim to). This impression was further confirmed as the prisoner followed Sergeant Mosely across the parade-ground-cum-beach, since his walk would be better described as a sway, and as he scanned the faces of his new comrades, and caught Jack’s frowning gaze, he had the temerity to raise an eyebrow as if in appreciation. Which wasn’t missed by the other prisoners, and resulted in jabbed elbows and muffled laughter, aimed mostly at Jack Shaftoe.

“Come on, gentlemen, home for the afternoon, show’s over,” cried Dudley, and with much grumbling, his charges shuffled back up to the stockade.

*

Jack was leaning against the wooden bars, getting in just a little more leathering-up time before day’s end while his mates argued over dice, when Sparrow was brought down from the fort, now sans boots and sash, but no less rakish for all that.

“Here you go, gents,” said Slater. “Be nice, now. Gully, you can tell him the rules, and if he fucks up, it’ll be your hide, hear?” With that he unlocked the gate, and pushed Sparrow through.

There was a small silence. The stockade, while reasonably large, still housed now a total of thirty six men, and that was a lot of pairs of eyes to have on you at once. Mick Gully stood, and held out a hand.

“Here, Sparrow, I’m Gully, you can call me Mick.”

The newcomer took the proffered hand, and grinned, and said, “So you’re the one who’ll get a whipping when I misbehave, eh? And you can call me Jack.”

“No he can’t,” said Jack Shaftoe. “We’ve already got one o’ them, thanks all the same, and it’s me, so you’re Sparrow.”

Sparrow looked down at him with a friendly grin, and said equably, “Certainly, we could do it that way. Or, ‘board my ship, we just adds to a name when faced with this circumstance. As can be seen in the case of our quartermaster, Long John, versus our carpenter, Little John; or Young Tom, the cabin-boy, and Old Tom, whose use I’ve yet to ascertain.”

“What ship’s that, then?” asked big Jim Trout. Sparrow looked up at him, then smiled a mile-wide smile that revealed a golden tooth.

“Why, gents,” he said, looking round his audience, “my ship… is the _Black Pearl_.”

Murmurs of appreciation circled round the prisoners. A fine ship, indeed.

“You sail with John Tobias?” said Jim.

“Aye, I’m his First Mate,” said Sparrow. And, having received their full attention, continued, “So, anyway, Jack, we could solve this little dilemma by naming you…” He cocked an eyebrow skywards, chin in hand as if thinking, and had, Jack noted with some displeasure, every man hanging on his coming words.

“By naming you, say, _Pretty_ Jack and myself – oh, now that ain’t going to work, is it?”

Tom Flinch let out a bark of laughter, and a ripple of amusement ran through the men. For a moment Jack felt himself scowling, then realised that the man had made the joke as much about himself as Jack, and that he’d be churlish to greet it with anger. He reached up a hand, which Sparrow took, and said, “I’m Shaftoe, then.”

“Delighted to make your acquaintance. And yours, sir…” as he moved on to Tom, and round, greeting every man there with courtesy and apparent interest. Gully went with him, taking his job of host quite seriously now that they had a virtual celebrity in their midst. A pirate from the _Black Pearl_ , no less!

*

That night, after a meal of goat, greens and water, and then lockdown, Sparrow came and sat in the dark with Jack-as-was, Shaftoe-as-of-today, and Flinch and Gully. The moon was bright enough that the endless games of dice could continue, but Jack was out of the game already.

“So, Jack,” said Sparrow. “Here we are.”

“Oh, so now I’m Jack?”

“Can I not call you that? I see no room for confusion, when the name’s coming from these lips.”

Jack sighed. Undecided yet as to whether this man was entertaining or merely irritating.

“Aye,” he said, “Here we are, and who knows how long for.”

“Why, how long are you planning on staying? Surely a man such as yourself has a plan for absconding by now; Mick tells me you gents have been here for near three months.”

“Well, tell me when you find a way to fly back to Jamaica,” said Jack, “for although I swear I haven’t shaved my back in all these many weeks, my wings are yet to sprout.”

“Oh, I don’t expect to be here long,” said Sparrow airily.

Irritating, he was definitely irritating. “And how’s that, are you a personal friend of the Governor, are you? Or is the _Black Pearl_ going to somehow slip past the long nines up on North Point and nip into the bay to get you, ignoring all the articles of your damn code? Or are you going to hurl yourself from the cliffs, like the pearl divers of San José and swim to Port Royal? Or have you got a raft shoved up your arse?”

Sparrow didn’t show any signs of rising to the bait. “Jack,” (and he put a friendly arm around Jack’s shoulders) “you don’t know me well, yet, so you don’t know that there simply ain’t a way to keep me stuck in one place.”

“Well, Jack, I assure you that there’s many who’ve tried absconding, and probably better men than you or I, but they’re all either dead or still here and still unable to sleep on their backs. Face it, mate, it’s a prison. And as prisons go, I’ve got to say it’s a bloody delightful one, but nonetheless, it is A Trap.”

“A trap’s only going to work if it fits the nature of those it’s trapping, luv.”

Jack thought about this for about half a second before pushing the man’s arm off his shoulders and saying “ _What_?” with as much contempt as he could muster. He had no room in his head, nor patience in his heart, for talking in riddles.

“Think about it… if this island were, instead, a giant lobster pot, could you be held prisoner in it?”

“A giant…? Course I fucking couldn’t, I’d swim back out, I’m slightly smarter than a lobster. Even Tom’s slightly smarter than a lobster.”

“Ah, but see, a lobster can get stuck in it, can’t he? It’s designed to trap him. Me, on the other hand… I’m fairly confident I can’t get stuck here. Take you with me if you like.” This last delivered with a repeat of that appraising look, and a raised eyebrow.

“Fuck off,” said Jack, tiredly. “You’re going nowhere, whatever dreams of lobsterhood you may have, and even if you were, I wouldn’t be going with you as your bum-boy.”

Sparrow shrugged. “As it happens, I wasn’t suggesting that to be a necessary part of the arrangement, but never say never, Jack.”

“Never,” said Jack, accepting of his own predictability. “But do let me know how you get on. And I know some good leaves for speeding the healing after all those lashes I can hear whispering your way.”

“We’ll see, mate, we’ll see,” said Sparrow. “Anyway, tell me your tale, how are you come here?”

So Jack told him of their journey from England, of their vague plans for piracy and riches, and of their unfortunate arrest almost as soon as it seemed that said plans might become a reality, due, primarily, to the impractical volume of Mick Gully’s great Irish bellow. And also to a little more rum than was probably practical during the planning phases of such an undertaking, particularly in a public place.

Sparrow grinned in the dark, teeth palely visible in the moonlight. “Fresh off the boat, weren’t you,” he said. “And what was this opportunity that had presented itself to you?”

“We’d heard of a captain looking for crew, Tom Skene his name was, and we were trying to find someone who knew truly of his whereabouts.”

Sparrow’s smile disappeared. “Tom Skene, of the _Ivory Maiden_?”

“Aye, that’s the one, or so we heard.”

“Narrow escape, Jack, narrow escape. He’s a rum one. Why d’you think he was so keen to find men, eh? Because he goes through them like the bloody flux, that’s why.”

“Oh, well, of course we were looking for a kindly and warmhearted pirate captain, so he wouldn’t have done at all.”

Sparrow laughed shortly. “Fair enough, Jack, there ain’t none o’ those, but still, you want to stay alive and get your share. And you want… to find a man who’s searching for the same thing you are. Skene, now, he’s searching only for trouble.”

“And what do the men of the _Black Pearl_ search for, then?”

After a moment’s silence, Sparrow said, “Different things, some of ‘em. But the Captain, and me, we’re after freedom, and the _Pearl_ gives us that in spades.”

Much as Jack could empathise with this, and considered it a laudable goal, he felt constrained to point out that, really, piracy only gives one the freedom to run away, and not the freedom to remain in one place.

Sparrow looked at him quizzically, and then laughed roundly, and said, “Well, if a man must remain in one place for a while, he should be pleased to do so with a companion of your perspicacity, Jack Shaftoe. Not to mention your other attributes.”

Jack’s glare was met only with a dark smile.

*

Morning came, as it always did, in a shower of cold water, thrown through the bars as a multi-purposed wakeup and bath. Most of the men were inured to it, and merely rolled over, or sat up slowly and stretched; Jack Sparrow was taken by surprise, and leapt up, gasping, before realising that he was not at sea, or drowning, and could lie right back down again. It wasn’t what he considered an auspicious start to a day.

Still, it had to be admitted, it wasn’t going to be an auspicious day, was it? Locked up on this damn island, with no way of knowing whether John Tobias had received word of his capture, or would do anything about it if he had. Jack knew that he had as many enemies on the Pearl as he had friends; many thought him too young to be first mate, others too fey and feckless. But those who had seen evidence of the quickness of his mind, alongside the quickness of his sword, no longer held those reservations; and luckily for Jack, the Captain was in this latter group.

But what good would that do him, now… Jack knew he had to find a way off the island, or his place would not be held long, and he was close, so close, to getting his heart’s desire, the next captaincy of the _Pearl_. He had to get back to her. And, if Tobias had received his communication, he had to find a way to protect her, should she come to his rescue.

So Jack Sparrow was a man with plenty on his mind. But not so much that he couldn’t enjoy the sensation of the morning sun on his face, or the warm back against his. Jack Shaftoe’s warm back. Now, that looked like a fabulous source of potential amusement, in the incarcerated interim… a lively face, a lively mind, a strong whippety body, and a violent objection to Jack’s appreciation of the above. A most entertaining combination. Jack wriggled back against Shaftoe, just for the amusement value, waiting for the slap, or the curse, or both.

But didn’t get it. Jack Shaftoe, impervious to the shower of water and not yet conscious, writhed sleepily against him, and stretching out long legs, hooked his unshackled foot backwards, pushing it between Jack’s calves for warmth. And let out a sigh, as if finally being granted something he’d sought for a long while.

Jack closed his eyes. Oh, not fair, not fair. It was one thing to provoke a fight, but another to provoke sweet warmth that wasn’t meant, that advertised pleasures that would never be forthcoming. But he couldn’t pull away. Lay silent as the men around him stirred, not wanting to disturb the body tight beside him.

“Oh, girls, that’s a lovely display of affection,” came a gruff voice, and Jack opened his eyes to see the largest of the Warburton brothers, whose name, like all the others’, began with an L, (though he had no recollection of the rest of its component letters). At the same moment, Shaftoe woke, and in a rapidly fluid movement, was on his feet. Jack’s back felt chill from his loss. He rolled onto it, stretching his hands behind his head. Shaftoe and the Warburton stood at his feet, one scowling, the other laughing.

“What can I say?” said Jack. “I’m hard to resist.”

Shaftoe shot him a look of loathing. And Jack was back on more familiar ground.


	2. Chapter 2

Midmorning, with the sun becoming ever brighter and harsher as it rose into the pitiless blue, the prisoners were released for work detail. One group, the least fortunate, was sent off to dig holes. At least, that would be their morning’s work. In the afternoon, they would fill them back in. Captain Petrie believed wholeheartedly in physical activity, to keep his wards healthy in body and spirit. Whether or not it had any purpose was entirely irrelevant.

The second detail was to be taken to the barracks, for cleaning. As they shuffled to the door of the stockade, to be chained for the walk up the hill, Jack Sparrow joined them. “I’ll go with this lot, eh, shall I?” he said, engagingly he hoped, to Sergeant Johnson. Seeing it as a wonderful opportunity for exploration, and knowing that he would have to find out more about this place, and about those long nines, if the _Pearl_ was to be protected.

But Johnson, had Sparrow only known it, was a man who enjoyed little of his work, aside from the myriad opportunities it presented him to say no. To anyone who’d known him for more than a week, this was a wonderful tool, and one that was used with happy abandon by most of the prisoners. Since Sparrow didn’t know that yet, however, he was automatically denied, and relegated to third detail.

Which, Jack Shaftoe believed, was an unreasonably lucky position for a new prisoner to be in – personally, he’d had to dig holes for the first three weeks. But no, Sparrow got to come fishing on day one.

“Coming fishing” involved being towed out on a raft, to the middle of the bay, where they were anchored, and would spend the rest of the day (having no oars) bobbing and fishing. It was, without exception, the best detail to be on. Tom and Jack invariably sat there, faintly dumbfounded, repeating, “We are in prison, aren’t we?” It made Newgate look like… well, the other side of the planet.

Two rafts were taken out, and, as luck would have it, Jack was spared the annoyance of Sparrow’s presence and attention and innuendo. He spent the day, instead, in the company of Flinch, Trout, two Warburtons, and the deaf-mute, Sanchez. The fishing was good, and their sack began to fill rapidly. When it became clear that the day’s quota would be met with ease, Jack and Tom decided to cease and desist, and leave the rest of the piscine slaughter to the others. They lay back at one end of the raft, shirtless and careful of fishhooks, listening to laughter drifting across from the other pontoon.

“He’s funny, that Sparrow,” said Tom.

“Hmm,” said Jack.

“Taken a shine to you, mate.”

“Well, he can polish his shine all he likes, as long as he does it by himself.”

Tom laughed and they lapsed into companionable silence for a while.

“Thinks he’s going to escape,” said Jack eventually.

Tom snorted. “Oh aye.”

“Well, we haven’t given it much of a try, have we?”

“We’ve watched others try, and that weren’t a lot of sport.”

“True. Fuckin’ idiot,” said Jack, and promptly fell asleep, lulled by the waves and sun.

Only to be woken, half an hour later, by the sound of a gunshot, and by a forceful pain in his leg which pulled him inexplicably off the raft, viciously splintering his back before dragging him down into cool blue.

The instant alertness this brought him was overwhelmed in seconds by confusion and dismay. There was a weight, a great weight, pulling him down, and for long seconds he plunged, hands reaching helplessly up to the light, the water around him becoming darker and bluer and colder as he fell away from the sunbeams’ reach, a strange slowness gripping his limbs as golden motes swam by his vision. Almost instantly, his body began to burn with a terrible need to breathe, an urge that he knew would not be able to be resisted for more than a few moments.

Fighting down black panic, Jack reached down to his leg, down towards the weight, but even as he did so, it lessened; looking down, he saw the sandy seafloor, with a lump of iron – their anchor – lying below him, and apparently attached to a rope, which, apparently, was attached to him, and, far above him, attached to the raft. Jack’s first thought was that someone on the raft was trying to kill him; the second, that they might erroneously think this an amusing jape; the third, as he realised the rope was not tied, but merely tangled around his leg and foot, that this was no more than an idiotic accident, and not a good enough excuse for early death. Lungs burning and vision blurring, he reached down, and managed to unwind the taut rope, which gave him a moment’s relief – until he noted that he was still not, in fact, doing anything that could be considered an _ascending_ sort of a thing.

Jack could swim, but barely. Very very barely. And not, apparently, with an iron shackle on his ankle. His chest was gripped with vice-like pain, and it was getting darker. A huge silver bubble burst from him, and he waved his arms and legs helplessly, watching it soar towards the light.

The bubble, bright and lively, rose and rose. As he stared upwards, his air-starved brain repeating stupidly that he was about to die, something was coming towards him. Something dark, something reaching. Possibly death. But before he could identify it, his body overrode his brain, and took a gasping watery breath, and with a shock of pain, unconsciousness arrived.

*

Unconsciousness, on reflection, was relatively pleasant. More pleasant than having someone beat upon your chest until you gasped and choked and vomited salty water, more pleasant than the vile sear in your liquid lungs as you reintroduced them to air. Jesus Christ.

Jack was back on the raft, and back in himself, and a voice was growling, “Get away from him, you pack of filthy, useless, whoreson incompetents! Give him room!”

And when he opened his eyes, it was Jack Sparrow, equally shirtless and bedraggled, who was sitting at his side, abusing his friends, whose faces formed a silhouette of concern against the sky.

“Not dead then,” said Jack, in a disturbing croak.

“Apparently not,” agreed Sparrow, his expression turning from angry concern to happy relief.

“Why not?” said Jack, ever curious.

“Sparrow saved you,” said a silhouette above him. Tom.

“Other raft, but?” said Jack, conserving words.

“Aye, well, you know, Jack…” The silhouette fidgeted. “We can’t swim, specially with these fecking bracelets on.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” said Sparrow, “you had a bloody anchor line to go up and down.”

“But you’d already dived in,” argued Tom.

Sparrow closed his eyes and shook his head, as if to finish the conversation there and then.

“Shot?” asked Jack, lungs still demanding verbal parsimony.

“Yes, my fault too!” cried Tom, irritable. “All that talk of escape, you ain’t entirely unresponsible. I just thought, if we pulled up anchor…”

“What,” said Sparrow caustically, “that you’d drift around the bay at a great rate of knots, so fast that a cutter, which might actually have oars I believe, would neither notice you nor be capable of apprehending you?”

Tom scowled. “Well, they did notice, alright, and fired a shot, so I dropped anchor.”

“Dropped anchor _and me_ ,” reminded Jack.

“I’m sorry, Jack, truly,” said Tom, and dropped down to a crouch. “Are you right?”

“Will be,” said Jack, and grinned, to show that he held no grudge, and really, it would at least give them a good tale to tell back at the beach. “And, Sparrow… my thanks.”

“Any time,” said Sparrow, with a wave of his hand, as though it was nothing. “I’m just glad to hear that you was talking of escape… I’ve some thoughts I may need advice on later.” He looked up at the approaching splash of oars, and saw the cutter. “Later,” he repeated, and patted Jack on the shoulder, and stood with the others, awaiting the guards.

*

Tom got off lightly; no more than a dozen lashes, and Dudley to administer them. Still, he was chastened and in a reasonable amount of pain that night, and nursing a serious grudge against Trout, who had made it more than clear that the entire escapade was Tom’s doing. No honour among this lot. Worse, Tom was being jeered at for not diving in to his mate’s rescue.

Jack felt fine now; his chest hurt only a little, when he laughed too much. Which, he was finding, was a certain risk one ran when one spent too long around Jack Sparrow; whose retelling of the tale, demanded repeatedly by the stockaded prisoners, became a closer and more cruelly funny impression of a half-drowned Shaftoe with each and every repetition.

“ _Shot??!!!_ ” croaked Sparrow, flat on his back, throwing a glance of angry-wet-cat proportions at Tom Flinch.

Watching him, Jack felt the pull of the man. So hard not to like, no matter how much one might mistrust his intentions; and yet, intentions or no, Jack already felt that, in addition to owing Sparrow his life already, he’d willingly entrust it to him again. Which made little or no sense – but, Jack would be the first to admit, many of his thoughts and actions would be said by some (‘some’ being Bob) to be lacking in that respect.

His story finished, Sparrow wandered over to where Jack sat, and stood over him, grinning.

“You don’t mind me makin’ a jest of it, do you Jack?”

“Tom’s probably the man for that question, ain’t he?” said Jack, squinting up at the pirate, who was silhouetted against a fiery orange sky, the last sunrays catching the gold in his mouth and hair.

“Ah, but see,” said Sparrow, “I don’t care whether Tom minds or no.”

“Well, I don’t see that it’s doing me any irreparable damage,” said Jack, oddly warmed inside that Sparrow should care for his own rather hardened sensibilities.

Sparrow sat, cross-legged, in front of him, and said, “So, Tom says you were talking of escape… could that be a pure coincidence, or perhaps, is it related to our discussion of last night past?”

Jack shrugged, grinned. “It wasn’t a conversation about _possibilities_ so much as one about _impossibilities_.”

“Why d’ye think it’s such a hard thing?” asked Sparrow. “I mean, really, mate, as far as gaols go, this one’s more like a health spa.”

“And yet, a distinctly _isolated_ spa, haven’t you noticed? The difficulty isn’t getting out of here, the difficulty is getting anywhere else.”

“So what one really needs, is… transport, eh?”

“Well, that would certainly prove an advantage.”

“Such as a ship.”

Jack sighed. “Aye, Jack, but firstly, we haven’t got one, and secondly, lax as the rest of this place may be, the one place that Petrie puts all his love an’ attention into is the gunnery up on the Point. No ship’s coming close to any sort of harbour or landing, of which there’s only one on this island, without being blasted to bejaysus.”

“That’s somewhat offputting, I’ll admit,” smiled Sparrow, and his ringed fingers traced patterns in the dusty earth between them, spirals, arcs, and trajectories. “But what if… what if the nines couldn’t fire? What if, say, their powder was spoiled? Or their cords were… ooh, misplaced?”

“You want to get in there, don’t you?” said Jack, and he almost laughed. He pushed his fingers through his matted hair, scratching at the salt-encrusted scalp. “No-one gets in there, Jack, or at least, no-one gets in there and then gets out again, not that I’ve seen.”

“Meaning?”

“Only time one of us has seen the inside of the fort is when Peter Trickle was locked up overnight for strangling his brother. And next day he suffered a similar fate, although in, shall we say, a slightly more formal setting."

But far from discouraging him, this advice seemed to light Sparrow with an internal fire. “There’s a brig up there, a lockup?”

“Aye, is that somehow a good thing?” asked Jack, bemused.

“Could be, could be… if you’re not a lobster, it’s a definite source of possibilities.”

*

Jack Sparrow lay awake still, though the hour was late, and the stockade filled only with snores, snuffles, and sleeping grunts. He missed his cot still, and the sway of the ship, its repetitive lulling that seemed to set up an answering rhythm in his blood. But he was also failing to sleep because there were too many other, insistent thoughts running through his head.

He had to find a way to get into the fort, and have some time there, undisturbed. And if there was one piece of self-knowledge that Jack had, it was that he had a peculiar talent for making other men want to lock him up; so the idea of a brig, a prison’s prison, was an easy way in.

Furthermore, a man such as himself, once in, could almost always get out. Jack, with his morbid fear of restraint, had long ago begun his study of ways to avoid it. There were few locks that he could not convince to open. The padlock on the door of this stockade, for example… in the dead of night, last night, he’d gone to it, slid the fine lock pick from its hiding place inside one of his braids, and made sure that he could open it. That ascertained, he closed it again, and went back to sleep. It was just… important to know that he _could_ get out.

So it’ll be easy, thought Jack. All I have to do, is find some way to get in there, preferably one that won’t result in anyone insisting on stretching my neck the next day.

Beside him, Shaftoe gasped in his sleep, and thrashed briefly. Plenty to dream about, no doubt, after today’s escapade.

That was the other thought that Jack could not dispose of. The thought of that warm back against his, this morning, and the cold limpness of that same body in his arms this afternoon; the desperate confused struggle on Shaftoe’s face, down in the yellowgreen depths… and the extent of the fear that it had engendered in Jack. 

It wasn’t anything he expected. It suggested to him that Shaftoe might be more than an entertainment to him; that Shaftoe might be a soul he could care for. And this was unexpected because, despite the interesting face and strong carriage, despite the quick tongue and quicker smile, Jack had to admit that Shaftoe, as human beings go, was wanting in more than a few ways. For starters, he’d made little or no effort to do anything about being stuck here, and that was nigh on incomprehensible to Jack. For seconds, the laziness of the man was something startling; he seemed to deal with things as they were forced upon him, and then (Jack suspected) would do so with creativity and charm, but till they were forced? Till then, he did nothing. Just waited, to see what life would throw at him. For all that Jack knew this to be a some-time failing of his own, he still did not admire it in others.

But then, in other ways… he was disarming. The utter straightforwardness that expressed itself through those black brows, and the complete lack of any vanity (actually… perhaps just a tiny smidgen of vanity would be an improvement), and the way he clearly couldn’t hold any sort of grudge. Jack wondered whether, had he been in Shaftoe’s shoes, Tom Flinch would be as hale as he was tonight. But Shaftoe had forgiven him in moments, had washed his bleeding back with all the care of a lifelong friend. Shaftoe was loyal. Shaftoe was warm. Shaftoe was independent, and funny, and dramatickal, and his arm, thrown in sleep, lay now across Jack’s shoulder, where Jack could feel the slow pulsing of an artery against his skin.

Jack sighed. The futility of such thoughts had not escaped him. But it did nothing to drive them from his head.

*

The next day was Sunday. Which, in the ordinary world, was a pleasant thing, being a day of rest; but here, was reviled, being a day of rest. Ergo, a day of being locked in a cage, with only a tedious morning respite to listen to Captain Petrie’s Sunday Address, which, in lieu of a resident man of the cloth, he took it upon himself to deliver.

This week, the chained rows were forced (thanks to Tom Flinch) to suffer through a homily on _accepting one’s punishment_. Without _exacerbating sin_ by piling yet another on top of it – viz, the attempt to escape. Whilst _respecting authority_.

Jack Shaftoe shifted and fidgeted and tried to support poor Tom, leaning more heavily against him every moment as the throb of his torn back grew ever stronger in the sunshine. He stifled a yawn. Wished for something to distract himself, and, before his conscious mind made the connection between the wish and the action, found himself searching the rows in front for Sparrow.

His conscious mind, however, wasn’t far behind, and was bemused at the speed of its unconscious counterpart. Since when was Jack Sparrow the most interesting thing on the island, eh? Surely… surely Tom, and Mick, and their shared history, was a more entertaining subject for a mulling man?

Oh, yes, replied the tiny, sensible portion of Jack’s cerebellum. Remember the time when…

Mmmm, replied the rest of his brain, offhandedly. Look at the way Sparrow stands there, his weight on one hip, hands so innocently behind him; look at the way that stance puts a curve on his arse, will you? And look, oh, god, look, the way he’s tracing the back of a finger over that curve, so that I can imagine just how it feels … he’s doing that on purpose, the rogue, and who the hell does he think he’s doing it _for_?

Sparrow slowly moved one foot behind him, pointing his toe in the dust. Balancing, still, on his left leg, his right foot began tracing a pattern in the dirt behind him, a pattern that looked a lot like… yes, it was… a letter. Jack stared, intrigued.

_S…_

Jack’s heart jumped into his throat, as he reacted, as one does, to even a small part of the most important and interesting word in the whole language, one’s own name. But subsided when the second letter followed – T…which was in his name if he recalled correctly, but not in that particular spot, and now, Jack was out of his literary comfort zone.

_O…P._

“Tom,” hissed Jack under his breath. “What’s that say?” Tom had picked up the rudiments of this reading lark.

“Stop,” whispered Tom.

Oh, nothing personal then. Stop – a mute plea to Petrie, to silence his endless pontification. Jack could empathise with that sentiment. Sparrow’s foot paused for a moment, then in one sweep, obliterated its message.

Jack tried, exceptionally briefly, to listen to the Captain, but it was a far from dedicated effort, and it collapsed the instant Sparrow’s toe reconnected with the dust. Jack craned his neck to see better, and poked his interpreter in the ribs.

_L… O… O… K… I… N… G._

“Looking, you sick bastard,” muttered Tom.

Jack, and several others, suffered sudden coughing fits of smothered laughter. Sparrow shifted his weight, wiggled his fingers behind his back in greeting, and cocked his head, looking at Captain Petrie with sincerity and concentration.

Jack tried to wipe the smirk from his face, lest anyone note that he’d been one of the intended recipients of the message. This growing regard was bad enough, without its becoming public knowledge.

*

They’d finished fighting over the cold leftovers that constituted supper, and were finally coming to the end of yet another tedious Sunday. All the usual stories had been told, the usual games of chance surreptitiously played (strictly forbidden on the Lord’s day, but they were watched over infrequently and with little attention), and the usual quota of fights begun and ended. The wind was hot and changeable, and the dusky air felt heavy and charged, lending an air of nervous anticipation to the usual Sabbath boredom. Jack could feel the edginess of his companions. More fisticuffs were probably on the way. This thought entertained rather than disturbed him, for anticipated trouble was easy to avoid – it was only the unexpected that drew out his terrifying capacity for the utterly stupid.

Tom, flat on his belly in the corner, groaned miserably, and Jack went to get him more water. He wandered over to the waterbarrel with Tom’s wooden cup. Sparrow, Gully and Trout were talking there, and fell silent as he approached.

“No need to shut up on my account,” said Jack. “Mick’ll tell me later anyway, won’t you Mickey?”

“No secrets here,” said Sparrow with a smile, and an oblique glance from under his dark lashes. “In fact we could do with your advice.”

“On?”

“Best way to get locked up for a night,” said Sparrow, cocking his head up towards the fort.

“I told you, you only need to strangle someone; and if you can’t see anyone here worth strangling, then I’d have to suspect you’re just not paying attention.”

“Well, it’s an option, but I must say I didn’t much fancy the _ending_ of that particular story.”

“Alright, then,” said Jack, filling Tom’s cup, and sculling it, ignoring Tom’s plaintive voice from the corner, “all it would take is a well-timed - albeit unsuccessful - escape attempt.”

Sparrow considered this for a moment, eyes narrowing, a red tongue tip hovering between his teeth, and then said, “But Tom didn’t get a visit up the hill, did he?”

“Hence the _timing_ issue,” said Jack. “Do it late at night and they ain’t going to do the punishing till next day, are they?”

“True, but… I don’t wish to alarm our lovely captors, nor put the idea of my incipient departure in their heads – it’ll only give me a harder job in the long run.”

“Well, if you’re going to be picky about it,” said Jack grumpily, having temporarily run out of suggestions.

“That weren’t the only time Trickle saw the inside of the cells,” said Trout suddenly, his rough features twisting up into a secretive smile. They all looked at him, quizzically, till he reddened under the scrutiny.

“Him and his brother were… closer than they should’ve been. Could say that that strangling was in the way of being a lovers’ tiff.”

Sparrow’s laugh was sudden and delighted. “You’re telling me, Jim, that all it takes is a bit of suspected buggery?”

“Aye,” said Trout, “although it weren’t merely suspected. Were it, George?” This last addressed to old George Peek, one of the island’s longest residents, who cupped a filthy hand to his ear and shouted, “What, Jim?”

“Peter Trickle and his brother, they was fuckin’ like rabbits, eh?” shouted Jim, attracting plenty of attention.

George spat expressively and scowled. “Dirty little beggars,” he said, which Jack took as confirmation of the claim.

“Alright then!” said Sparrow, still with a sunny smile on his face, and, turning so that he was addressing the entire stockade, added, “So, gents, I’m in need of a partner in crime; do I have any volunteers? You’ll have to be caught in a compromising position with yours truly, and there’ll doubtless be a whipping in it for you, but I promise on my honour, when I get out of here I’ll take you with me as payment.”

The silence was palpable. The men stared at Sparrow in varying degrees of disbelief and hostility. It was clearly an entirely ridiculous proposition. At best, it involved imprisonment, leading up to an unenjoyable amount of pain and bloodloss. In addition, it had the dubious benefit of having to act the part of, and subsequently being labelled as, a sodomite, which doubtless carried its own ongoing social penalties. 

Jack twitched as the Imp of the Perverse jumped and hissed beside him, sinking its pointy talons deep into his tender flesh, frothing with joy at the prospect of such an opportunity for the irrational.

It was such a stupid idea. It could barely be stupider. Jack was powerless to resist.

“I’m your man,” he said, and then thought to add, “As it were.” And was instantly rewarded with a chemical surge throughout his body, as he always was when he did something utterly ill-advised. The Imp, wailing in delight, let go of him, and sank to the ground, writhing in happy satisfaction.

Gully and Trout stared at him in disbelief. Sparrow grinned like a Bedlamite, and the hot wind whistled through the bars of the stockade, lifting his tangled hair around his face. “Perfect,” he growled, in a voice that sent a shiver down Jack’s spine. “Surprising, Jack, but perfect.”

The threat and promise in Sparrow’s expression put a dent in Jack’s adrenaline high. “It ain’t perfect, Sparrow, and don’t think it is,” he said determinedly. “I owe you, that’s all.”

“Certainly, certainly, I meant nothing more,” said the pirate, inclining his head; but he failed utterly (having tried very little) to hide the wicked merriment on his face.


	3. Chapter 3

  


That night, it was Jack Shaftoe who couldn’t sleep. The storm had not yet broken, though massy clouds hid the stars and the wind, hot and relentless, drove dusty earth and leaves before it, making sleeping on the ground a thoroughly unpleasant proposition. There were a few holey blankets in one corner, not usually needed at this time of year, and though they were almost certainly fiendishly infested, Jack got up to get one, and pulled it over his head to keep out the worst of the dust and wind. The musty blackness beneath it felt almost like privacy.

The joy-of-stupidity rush hadn’t lasted long, and then the whispering had begun, and the sideways looks, and the laughter, and where was the damned Imp then, when Jack needed him for moral support? He put a brave face on it, and repeated that he owed Sparrow for saving his life, and that was all, and nothing more, but he knew there wasn’t the slightest chance that he’d escape days – no, weeks – of ribbing about this. Also recognised that, had the tables been turned on any one of his fellows, he’d have been doing exactly the same.

But still, it was frustrating that he bore the brunt of it all, and Sparrow got off almost scot-free – as if, being so upfront about his lack of concern, he’d pre-empted all their taunts. As if he were special, and different, just for being Jack Sparrow.

Jack wondered what, exactly, he would have to do. And would he have to do it here? With an audience?

Some instinct made him roll over, till he was lying on his back. Which made him want to laugh. Too late to try and protect it now, Jack my lad, you’ve just handed it out on a platter. And why? Why? Was it just the evil influence of the Imp?

A tiny thought sparkled on the edge of Jack’s mind… a thought that, just perhaps… perhaps the boys and their taunts had a point. Perhaps he had done it with some form of intent, with some thought of what it would be like to touch Jack Sparrow’s olive skin. That mouth, under the moustache, was not so far from a woman’s mouth. Those eyes would make a Southwark doxy a rich woman. So why, just because they were attached to a male body, should he not be able to see that they were beautiful?

Jack groaned. He had been away from women for far, far too long.

*

_Dear Bob…_

_Well, dear brother, if there was ever a time for confiding in family and sharing your soul with them – this probably isn’t it. Which makes it a perfect time to compose you a letter that’ll never see paper, let alone England or your good self._

_Here I am, Bob, lurking in some bushes, not two hundred yards from the barracks, waiting for the changing of the watch. That’s right, am temporarily not locked up, have found myself someone who can take care of that little problem in record time. He’s right here with me actually._

_Thing is, Bob, we’re waiting for the changing of the watch so that we can be recaptured and get into more trouble than we were in before. Long story, won’t bore you with it, but you know how these things happen. To me, at any rate. Interesting point being, we’re planning to be locked up for buggery._

_Yes, that’s not a spelling mistake, I can spell burglary._ (Jack, incapable of spelling anything more than his own name, but having made this aural connection when casting about for ways to insult various thieves of his acquaintance, found this inordinately amusing.)

_He’s an interesting one, though, my partner in crime. Not a dull man, nor a stupid one. Nor an ugly one, nor a cowardly one. It’s conceivable you might even like him – no, on second thoughts, that’s less likely. But I find myself liking him, Bob. Although I wish he’d stop tugging at my damned trousers._

“Sparrow! _Will_ you stop tugging at my damned trousers!”

“Keep your voice down, we ain’t ready yet. Speaking of which, will you please drop these tattered and repulsive excuses for nether garments, which I hesitate even to honour with the name of trousers?”

Jack clutched the waist of his maligned trews and turned to face his molester, who turned out to be standing very close behind him. He felt warmth flush over his face.

“And when did we determine that I was the one providing the arse for this little undertaking?” he demanded, procrastinating.

Sparrow’s eyebrow arched and the moonlight showed the amusement on his face. “Well, Jack, never say never, and I don’t, but for tonight’s purposes, it’s going to be you, savvy?”

“Why?”

“Because this is MY escape plan, and I’M in charge of it. And don’t fret so, I won’t really do it. Unless… you want me to, of course?” This last with widened eyes and a flutter of lashes.

Jack shot him a Look. The Look engendered nothing but more amusement. “Alright then, since you’re in charge, how about you tell me what your master plan is? If you’re not going to do it, how’re you going to be locked up for it?”

Sparrow grinned. “Smoke and mirrors, darling. All we need to show them is two men, in the right position, making the right noises, in the appropriate state of enjoyment and dishabille. Ergo, let’s start by you dropping your trousers.”

Jack was more than a little mortified by the idea. “What about you?” he grouched.

“Oh, for the love of—” muttered his tormentor, and without a moment’s hesitation, whipped off his shirt, wriggled out of his breeches, and stood there, hands on hips and a challenge on his face. “Now will you drop ‘em?”

“Alright,” said Jack rather faintly, and he averted his eyes from the painfully fascinating sight in front of him, and shucked off his trousers. Aware that his heart was beating harder than it had any right to in such a situation.

“There,” said Sparrow patronisingly, “That’s not so bad, is it? Now can we stop being blushing virgins, and get on with it?”

“I’m not a—” started Jack, and looked up as he did so, and lost his train of thought, faced once more with a naked Jack Sparrow. Whose narrow swaying body was exerting an odd pull on Jack’s gaze, and his thoughts, and even some parts of his anatomy. So his sentence remained unfinished, and in many ways, that was the more appropriate choice.

Jack’s expression was not lost on Sparrow, who moved closer, and locked his hands behind Jack’s head, resting his forearms on Jack’s shoulders. Jack was silent, mesmerised by the pitchy gaze, inches from his face.

“Now,” grinned Sparrow, “comes the fun part.”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to,” said Jack, a little disoriented.

“I did. But I also said that we need to display _an appropriate state of enjoyment_ , my friend, and I must say, you don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself much. For which I feel terribly responsible, so with your permission, I’d like to rectify the situation.”

“You can’t,” said Jack, referring less to the granting of his permission, than to the physical likelihood of said enjoyment being generated by Jack Sparrow. And even to him, it sounded like a groundless protestation.

Sparrow came closer still, till Jack could feel the heat coming off the man, and smell the salt of his skin; leaned in, bringing that mouth close to Jack’s ear, and whispered, tauntingly, “Go on, Jack… say you’ll let me try.”

Jack felt swimmy, faintly delirious. It had been months, months since he’d been this close to another body in this way, and wasn’t that a good excuse for suddenly feeling the things he was feeling? _Dear Bob, it had nothing to do with the man himself, I was simply far, far too bloody horny, so what could I do? Eh?_ He could feel a low throb beginning in his belly, spreading warmly down… speak, Jack, speak, before you lose control and say something fucking stupid.

“Alright then, if you must,” said Jack in an admirably offhand manner, and unsure (even as he heard the words) whether this counted as something fucking stupid.

Sparrow put a hand up under Jack’s shirt, held it lightly against his back, a warm magnet for all Jack’s attention… and then a second, slipping up to slide over Jack’s chest, and those hands were gentle, and hot, and Jack had to admit that he liked them, though he made no move in response. What’s more, he liked the insistent press of Sparrow’s mouth against his neck, and he closed his eyes, and concentrated on his memory of the shape of that mouth, and how it wasn’t really so different from a woman’s mouth, if you ignored the tickle of moustache; and how it smiled, and the sharp white teeth it revealed when it did so. And he liked it when Sparrow’s tongue emerged from that mouth, and traced its slick way up behind Jack’s ear, where he was particularly ticklish, and he liked the hot breath that accompanied it, and the trail of tickling hair on his neck, and he thought he’d probably like that hair all over his shoulder, and what difference did being shirtless make, really? At this point?

So he pushed Sparrow away just long enough to get rid of his shirt, and then said, “Carry on,” and re-presented his neck for attention. Which Sparrow was kind enough to grant it, in fact, to lavish upon it, until Jack could hear his own breathing becoming harsher, and found himself clenching the fists that were hanging at his sides to stop them from grabbing the other man. Which really wouldn’t do. And then those warm hands began to move, and one of them was moving firmly and reassuringly up his spine, while the other was heading delicately south, until, with a grunt of satisfaction, Jack felt long fingers curl around his swelling cock.

_Jesus Christ, I hope the boys don’t get to hear of this._

The mouth upon him didn’t stop, kissing and suckling and licking and tickling, but never risking an approach towards his own lips; and the hand below his belly, clever and certain, had him hard in moments. God, it had been too long, too long. Jack let out a hiss of desire and gave up on controlling his hands, which flew out to Sparrow’s narrow hips, and clutched them to him. There was a clash of hipbones, and Jack was exquisitely aware of the other man’s erection, jabbing him in the abdomen. That was a new one. He risked opening his eyes, and looked at the strong brown shoulder against his, and the dark curtain of ornamented hair that hid Sparrow’s face as he licked Jack’s neck. Not unpleasant. And not ineffectual, as far as his cock was concerned.

The mouth came back up to his ear. “Want me to try harder?” muttered Sparrow.

Even to an inexperienced sodomite, this sounded like an invitation to a head-job.

“Ye-rggghhh-no,” said Jack, gaining an unexpected modicum of control at the last minute, and feeling a definite urge to kick himself for it.

“No?” queried Sparrow, looking at Jack with quizzical heat, and sliding his fingers around the head of Jack’s cock, already slick. “I swear you’d like it.”

“That’s not the point,” said Jack through gritted teeth, digging his fingers into Sparrow’s flesh.

“Jack, my lovely, that’s _always_ the point.”

“I thought we had another point. And correct me if I’m wrong, but are those voices I hear?”

Sparrow cocked his head, listening, and then smiled wolfishly. “Dammit, Jack, you’re right. Come on!” He pulled Jack toward the edge of the bushes, where they could hear and, at a pinch, see the approaching guards, and pushed him down on hands and knees. “Righto, Jack, let’s do it. And in case they should shoot me on the spot, may I say in advance, thank you very much for your co-operation.”

“You’re welcome,” said Jack, as Sparrow knelt down behind him; and then heard a mucous spit, and felt Sparrow’s wet hand slide between his buttocks, making him yelp.

“Jesus, Jack!”

“Verisimilitude, darling,” said Sparrow, and grabbed Jack’s hips, and pulled him backwards, so that Jack felt the moist velvety slide of Sparrow’s cock between the cheeks of his arse. A muffled sound came from the pirate, and Jack grinned, somehow pleased to be the cause of it; and didn’t bother to stop grinning when Sparrow’s hand slid across his hip and grasped him once more; and then was incapable of wiping the grin from his face as Sparrow began to move his hips, setting up a rhythm as though he were fucking Jack, and mimicking that rhythm with his hand on Jack’s cock. Jack could feel himself being sucked into that familiar vortex of sensation, feel that he was losing himself in it, and he couldn’t believe that it could work this way, not with this man. But dear God, it apparently could.

The footsteps and voices came nearer, and Sparrow suddenly said, “I think this’ll be the best way to do it, Jack, and don’t take it wrong,” which Jack really didn’t understand the implications of, until he felt long fingers closing around his throat, and the warm hand left his cock and snaked its way across his hips forcefully, and he cried out in dismay as Sparrow thrust against him, and squeezed the air from him, and growled loudly, “I said, shut _up_ , you teasing little—”

The footsteps stopped, and a voice said, “What the hell?” and then they came on, faster now.

Jack, confused and not a little disappointed, grabbed at Sparrow’s fingers with one hand, the other being needed to hold himself up, but he couldn’t loosen their iron grip. His delicious arousal vanished as fast as it had arrived, and he growled and writhed, arching for breath, but the only response from the man behind him was a nasty laugh, and a triumphant, “That’s it, move that arse for me,” and the ground trembled under running feet until the bushes parted to reveal the appalled faces of Dudley and Slater; and then the air was full of voices and shouting as Sparrow was pulled to his knees, and Jack, half strangled, fell to the ground, gasping for breath.

He was dragged away by Dudley, and was still unable to speak, unable to protest, as he saw Slater’s boot connect viciously with the vulnerable bones of Sparrow’s hip, and heard words of abusive disgust hissing from the officer’s mouth, showering the contorted form below him with venomous spittle; and then Dudley pulled him beyond vision, and all he had left were the soft thuds of leather on flesh, and grunts of pain; but he never heard Sparrow speak, and never heard him cry out.

*

Jack barely slept, having been kept awake till the small hours recounting events (or at least, a heavily edited version thereof) to his companions. General consensus was that Sparrow was a fucking madman.

But then, general consensus was not fully informed. Jack, having slightly more to go on, was beginning to feel differently. Jack was beginning to suspect that Sparrow had done it to save him from punishment; Dudley had made it abundantly clear that he considered Jack to have been the victim of a particularly unpleasant attack, and therefore more deserving of sympathy than condemnation.

Jack, thoughtlessly, had not immediately disputed this interpretation; and having not done so, could not calculate a way to rectify it without a) explaining that it had all been a cunning plan, which was not an option; or, b) claiming that it had been consensual, which, by the time they reached the stockade, with its rows of bright curious eyes, didn’t feel like an option either. And this action (or rather, inaction) had kept him awake for most of the rest of the night.

When he did sleep, close to dawn, it was not the peaceful oblivion he was hoping for. It was a dark, busy sleep, full of satiny skin, and dark eyes, and pressing flesh… and a full and curving mouth that Jack could not reach, could only watch, as it smiled, and spoke murmuring words of enticing nonsense to him.

*

Once again, the chained rows of prisoners stood in the pre-noon brightness, shuffling from foot to foot, listening to an address from Captain Petrie. A particularly sorrowful address, in which that kindly man talked firmly of the necessity of the coming action, and of his regret for the terrible unpleasantness that had occasioned it.

“We all feel, keenly, the absence of our homes, and of the comfort of our wives,” he said (disingenuously, to Jack’s ears – would have been better to say, _the absence of bordellos and of the comfort of cheap women_ ), “and yet, this does not excuse an action which is so contrary to the laws of both church and state. I _will not_ condone it, gentlemen. And I most certainly will not condone its forceful application upon another.”

Jack shifted uneasily.

“Bring out the prisoner, Lieutenant,” said Petrie sharply; and from the barracks came two soldiers, dragging between them a slight, manacled form. Behind the captain stood two stout wooden poles. Sparrow was led between them.

“Jack Sparrow,” said the Captain, sorrow still underlining his voice, “You were discovered in an act of utter barbarity, and sadly, that barbarity must now be returned to you. I had hoped for better from you, but…” He shook his head slightly, and sighed. “I sentence you to sixty lashes.”

“Shit,” muttered someone, amongst a general murmur. Jack felt sick. He shuffled to one side, to see Sparrow better, and the man was looking his way. Their eyes met, and Jack didn’t know what he expected to see there, but it wasn’t the blank hollowness that greeted him. It was as if Sparrow had already absented himself, and presented only his body to the whip. The truancy of that bright sparking soul sent a wave of dismay through Jack.

Sparrow was unmanacled, his shirt was pulled off him, and each hand was lashed to a pole, so that he stood spreadeagled, and could not fall.

“Stop,” Jack heard himself mutter; and then, as he realised he couldn’t stand dumbly there and watch, he gathered his scattered courage and wits and summoned his vague military memories, and said loudly, “Captain Petrie, sir! May I speak, sir!”

Every head twisted his way, including, he was pleased to see, Sparrow’s.

“Shaftoe?” said Petrie, sharply, and clearly not in the mood for nonsense.

“Captain Petrie,” said Jack, stifling an inappropriate urge to laugh, “I’m not convinced you’re in full possession of the facts, sir.”

“Such as?”

Oh, Christ, here we go. The Imp had reappeared and was capering before him, nodding encouragement, eyes wide. _Bugger off_ , thought Jack. _I thought this one up all by myself, thank you._

“It wasn’t, ah, forceful application, sir.”

Behind him, Jack heard Mick make a choking sound. Petrie’s face went a shade redder.

“What are you implying, Shaftoe?”

Jack gritted his teeth. This was insanity. He was actively trying to take lashes from another man’s back, onto his own. The Imp bounced about him, crowing and plucking at him.

“Well, sir, I like it rough, sir.”

Mick lost it entirely, and he wasn’t the only one. The parade ground dissolved into howling laughter. At which, Petrie’s expression went black, and Jack realised that he had gone too far, and was going to achieve nothing.

“This is not a laughing matter, Shaftoe,” said the Captain, “and one more word from you, and there’ll be lines on your own back also. Sergeant Slater, if you please.”

Slater stepped forward, a big man against Sparrow’s slightness, and drew back the lash. Jack closed his eyes.

But he could not close his ears; and every hiss of flying leather, every crack of contact on smooth skin, sent a shudder though him. Still, there was no sound from Sparrow; the hitched breaths and sympathetic hisses came only from the other prisoners.

And when Jack risked a look, at the halfway point, he saw a figure still standing tall, white knuckled and bleeding, but on its own two feet. But by the time he opened his eyes again, when the sixtieth stroke fell, it dangled limply from its bonds, head lolling, the dust below it moist and dark.


	4. Chapter 4

  


 

Sparrow was delivered back to them later that afternoon, managing to walk with help from Dudley; and Jack went to the door of the stockade, pulled a bloodied arm over his shoulders, and helped the man over to the shaded corner where he’d piled blankets, brought clean water, and washed a strip of linen torn from the bottom of his shirt to tend him with. Dudley helped him to lay Sparrow down, and then slipped Jack a small pewter hip flask, saying, “If the pain gets too bad…”

Jack nodded, feeling terrible for every cruel comment he’d ever made about this soft-faced, soft-hearted man, and swore to himself that he’d embody the milk of human kindness from now on, at least where Dudley was concerned.

The officer left, and Jack felt the silence, and the gaze of his companions; could almost hear them thinking, how much of all that was true? What the fuck was Shaftoe playing at, back at the parade ground, and what’s he doing now? Tom, thinking no doubt of the Message, would not even meet his eyes.

But… but, fuck ‘em. Jack knelt beside Sparrow, wet the cloth, and began to clean away the blood that caked his back and formed dry, cracking rivulets down his sides. He knew what the implications of this action were, in the eyes of his mates; and had to ask himself, all joking aside, why he didn’t care. But he was starting to think that maybe he had a tendency to care a little much, a tendency that should be grown out of, since – given the starring role which the Imp played in his life – it was never going to cause him anything but grief.

Sparrow winced at Jack’s touch, and opened his eyes. “So, Jack,” he muttered, “you were holding out on me, eh?”

“What d’you mean?” asked Jack, wondering if a measure of delirium was setting in early.

“If I’d known you liked it rough, I wouldn’t’ve bothered surprising you like that,” – and this was definitely accompanied by a smirk.

“You shouldn’t’ve anyway,” Jack said reprimandingly, and as the words left his mouth, he feared he might be channeling just the teeniest bit of old Bob, and was this how Bob felt, every time he said that? Jack was momentarily disturbed by the rather frightening thought that he seemed to be forming a friendship in which he, Jack Shaftoe, could perhaps be said to be the sensible one. “It would probably only’ve been twenty each, so you made it three times worse with your little game.”

“Or a thousand times better, depending on which one of us you are,” said Sparrow, and then hissed through his teeth as Jack reached a particularly raw spot.

“Yes, well, very fuckin’ heroic, but also very fuckin’ martyrly,” said Jack, angry to see the pain. “Here, Dudley gave me some rum to ease you, d’ye want some now?”

Sparrow shook his head, a small motion that caused no small measure of discomfort. “Pour it on my back,” he said, “but sparingly mind, I’d be grateful for leftovers.”

Jack scowled, at both the waste and the prospective agony.

“Do it!” snapped Sparrow. “I’m a bloody pirate, man, I know how to treat a cut-up back.”

Jack could hear the pain talking, and knew better than to argue. He did as he was bid, refusing to watch as Sparrow bit his lip and clutched hard at the filthy blankets, and was happy to find that at the end of it he still had a half-full flask to hold to his patient’s lips. Sparrow drank it awkwardly, greedily, and managed a grin.

“Just like home,” he muttered. Which reminded Jack of the reason for all this nonsense in the first place.

“Did you do what you wanted to do, up there last night?” he asked; and immediately regretted it, as the blankness returned to that mobile face, and the pallor beneath the tanned skin flared again. Sparrow squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away from Jack. Which, sadly, was all the answer Jack needed.

*

Jack Sparrow was exempt from work detail as his ripped back slowly scabbed and healed. For the first four days he lay as motionless as he could, which nearly killed him, but he knew from experience – well, mostly observation, thankfully – that it would be worth it in the long run. And each evening, returning to the stockade, Shaftoe brought seawater, and poured it on, and Jack gritted his teeth and let it do its work.

Jack was not accustomed to inactivity, and though (had he been asked the question prior to this incident) he would have claimed to have a talent for it, in practice this proved not to be the case. He was forced to admit that he was apparently adept at doing nothing only if he was either a) actively avoiding something less pleasant, in which case it took on a sweet sheen of illegality which never failed to please him, or b) drunk. And the latter, Jack reasoned, didn’t even really count as doing nothing, not the way he did it.

So those four days were long and arduous. And cruel; for half of Jack’s heart prayed that his Captain had received his communiqué, and was on his way to relieve him; and the other half prayed that it had gone astray, and the beautiful _Pearl_ was not sailing serenely towards the bite of the long nines, believing that Jack would protect her. Which he had failed to do. He had been ready to fight his way through any lock; but this backward place lacked even that simple tecknology, and his way had been barred with stout oak. Primitive, and utterly effective.

These bitter thoughts filled his head as he lay unmoving, waiting for his skin to regrow. The only thing which dispatched them was the evening return of Jack Shaftoe, and his painful saltwater love. The other men, still chary, hovered at a distance, and Jack hadn’t the energy or desire to tempt them closer; Shaftoe, for some reason, had no such qualms, and had appointed himself Jack’s nurse. Which Jack appreciated and, it must be said, enjoyed. Shaftoe’s hands were sure and quick, and even (since he was mostly fishing during the day) relatively clean; and though they hurt him as they touched his tender wounds, they were also thorough, and swabbed right to the edge and end of every line; and at those sweet terminal places, where torn flesh segued to smooth, Jack learned that if he concentrated, he might well feel a rough warm fingertip skitter over skin. And that made him flinch in an entirely different manner.

But nothing ever showed on Shaftoe’s face, and nothing was ever said of what had passed between them. Though it lived in Jack’s mind, in scattered recollections of warm salty skin, and strong fingers clutching at his hips; of smooth, pale muscles in the moonlight; and of a mouth that said it didn’t care and a cock that belied it.

And then, crueller and more focussed, in the feel of a windpipe compressing beneath his fingers, and the sound of anger and distress that was forced past them, and the furious struggles of the body beneath his own as he carried out the rest of his plan. A plan which, now more than ever, he could not regret for its efficacy; but certainly, he did regret it for the message it must have carried in its harsh words and actions. Oh, how Jack wished he’d never had to do it; that he’d been given the chance to give Jack Shaftoe what he so clearly _needed,_ regardless of all his protestations! But then… how glad he was that he _had_ done it, and none but he himself had to pay the price for his failed attempt. It was a quandary, alright, and Shaftoe gave him no hint of how he should resolve it.

After four days, the itching started, and slowly increased its silent shriek until it was enough to drive him quite insane. But Jack knew that that was a good thing. Then, Jack got up, and started to move around again; followed the sun round the stockade, letting it dry and crack the long scabs. And in these cracks, shiny pink skin was visible, or so Shaftoe assured him. Jack knew he would bear the marks forever, and he’d no longer be the lovely smooth-skinned boy that men wanted to bend before them; and that pleased him, for he wasn’t that boy anymore, and he didn’t want always to be the one doing the bending.

Now that he was mobile again, Jack started to rebuild his acquaintance with the other prisoners; turned on his charm again, and tried to dispel their discomfort. But though some asked, he never spoke of that night with Shaftoe; just grinned and twirled his moustache and said that he and Shaftoe might just take to the boards at Drury Lane if either one of them ever went back to England.

And every night, and most of all just before dawn, he listened for the roar of the cannons, and hoped that his Captain had not trusted him.

*

It took Sergeant Dudley five days to stop believing Jack Shaftoe’s concerned face as he described Sparrow’s nightly delirium and agony, and begged the sergeant to refill his kindly flask; it took eight days for him to summon the courage to refuse it, for doing so meant acknowledging that he believed Shaftoe was lying, and that seemed so… _rude_. But finally, as Shaftoe approached him on the beach, he pursed his lips and set his shoulders and shook his head, ready for the next level of lying and supplication to begin.

To his surprise, it didn’t. Shaftoe, the beggar, just smiled and nodded and said, “Fair enough, Sergeant, and you’ve been most kind – I’m sure Sparrow thanks you for it.”

“Yes, well,” said Dudley in confusion, and pocketed the flask before anyone else should see. Shaftoe sauntered off, and that was that.

No harm done.

*

Jack Shaftoe felt a pressing urge to get blindingly drunk.

This urge was doubtless exacerbated by the unusual fact that, for the first time in three and a half months, he now actually possessed the means to do so. One and two-thirds bottles of rum, stoppered with rags and buried out behind the latrine trench. Every time he thought of it, he had to restrain himself from capering.

But then, there were some important decisions to be made regarding its consumption. Such as, _when_ ; and _where_ ; and _in the company of whom_. For Jack knew it would be far less entertaining to embark on this mission solus.

It should, of course, be shared with Tom and Mick. But firstly, that meant a three-way split, which might not even achieve the intended result; and secondly, it would mean sneaking away from hard labour during the day, and chucking it back, and then returning. Which was no fun, and would be a problem even if he managed to make a Solomon’s choice between the two of them.

Of course, the other option was right there, scratching at the edges of his scabs, and harbouring a pointy piece of freedom in that tangled mass of hair. A night, free to roam, with a bottle in hand, and…

Oh, god, and? And?

Jack didn’t trust himself far, but he trusted Sparrow about a quarter of that distance. And he didn’t trust himself far because that damned mouth was in his dreams every night.

 _Jack, Jacky, it’s perfect,_ whispered the Imp.

 _He’s right, you know he is_ , whimpered his cock.

Jack poked himself in the leg with a sharp stick to get them both back in line.

“Steady on, no call for cruelty,” said a voice behind him, laced with laughter, and Jack, sitting in the dirt, craned his head back and saw Sparrow’s face. He grunted as Sparrow came and sat crosslegged beside him.

“Hard day in the salt mines?” asked Sparrow, who never failed to gloat over the fact that Jack was being made to work and he was not.

“Sanchez got a shark,” said Jack with distaste. No man who had to spend the day on a flimsy raft, dribbling fish blood, with his legs dangling in the water, was particularly happy with even the most infantile of sharks being spotted in the vicinity.

“Jack, even if he was telling the truth about the size of the thing, and I must say that I automatically reduce any fish story by a factor of at least three, it wasn’t exactly a Terror of the Deep.”

“Well, la-di-dah,” said Jack, “but that’s the most exciting information I’ve got to offer you today. And what fabulously thrilling adventures did you get up to in our absence?”

“Point taken, no need for sarcasm,” said Sparrow, and stared off into the distance, eyes glazing over. Thinking of days when he did indeed have fabulously thrilling adventures. And looking so forlorn that before Jack knew what he was saying, his mouth excreted the words, “Want to have an adventure tonight?”

Sparrow’s eyes snapped back into focus and bored into Jack’s. “Whatever do you mean, Mr Shaftoe? Don’t tell me you’ve a _plan_?”

“ _Shhh_ ,” hissed Jack. “Don’t spread it around, I’ve a reputation for shiftlessness to consider.”

“Alright then,” said Sparrow, and his face resumed its look of bored indolence, and he began to draw in the dust. Quietly he said, “Details of said plan? Point? Risk?”

“Tonight, when everyone’s asleep. No point at all, beyond getting drunk. Very little risk if we make it back in time.”

“ _Drunk_ , did you say?” Only Jack was close enough to see the glint in those black eyes.

“Aye. Are you in?”

“Mate, if I was any inner,” drawled Sparrow, “I’d be inside out.”

*

Jack lay sleepless in the dark, Sparrow beside him, listening for the sounds of the other men. Chances were that at least one would notice their leaving, but Jack was keen on reducing that chance as low as it would go; so he was holding on as long as he could, salivating quietly at the thought of his precious bottles, and how their contents would burn their way so sweetly down his throat, and shimmer along his limbs till they were warm and heavy, and how he’d feel a whole lot better about his incipient hanging.

Sparrow shifted slightly, and his toe oh-so-barely touched Jack’s leg, so lightly that maybe it did no more than disturb the blonde hairs there, and Jack froze at the bolt of something that went through him.

It seemed that the events of a week past had ignited a desperate memory of what it was to touch warm skin, and move against another body, and wind oneself up and up and up to that feverdream pitch; to put it more simply, Jack had never been more horny in his life, and it was killing him. He’d reached a point where he’d become shamefully hard just through letting his fingers slide against Sparrow’s unmarked skin as he cleaned the wounds. Ridiculous! He’d set his face in stone and dealt with the problem by having an imaginary conversation with Bob in which he confided that he had a hard-on for a grubby and disreputable pirate whose back was one giant scab. The look on Bob’s face (easy to imagine, for Jack had been the recipient of it more times than he cared to count, though never – he suspected – for such a good reason) was enough to return his blood to its rightful haunts.

 _Get a grip, Jack_ , he told himself firmly. _It’ll pass._ And he kicked Sparrow none-too-gently, signalling that it was time to go.

Sparrow narrowed his eyes at the sharpness of the kick, but silent as a cat, got to his feet and led the way past the sleeping ranks of bodies, both hands up in his hair, searching for his lockpick. He extracted it, and brandished it at Jack, grinning wickedly before reaching through the palisades and opening the door no more than a scant minute later. And they were out.

Jack took the lead, ducking for the cover of the trees and heading straight for the trench, horridly easy to locate even on the most moonless night. Behind it, he located his marker-palm and took three large strides due north from it before kneeling on the soft earth and beginning to dig. In no time, he’d located his trove, and stood grinning at Sparrow in the moonlight, brandishing two bottles of thick dark syrupy love.

“Well huzzah, and how the fuck did you manage that?” murmured Sparrow appreciatively, eyes glinting with greed, and he slid one finger sensuously down the cloudy glass, dislodging dirt as it went.

“I’m not entirely useless. Here you go,” said Jack, thrusting the not-quite-full one at his companion. Sparrow cocked an eyebrow.

“Share and share alike, Jack, ain’t we in on this together?”

“You’re in on this out of the goodness of my heart, as I recall,” retorted Jack.

“Have a care, mate, or you’ll bring out my capacity for unfair negotiation,” said Sparrow with a leer. Jack stared wordlessly for a moment, then responded to the tic developing beneath his eye by turning on his heel and stamping into the bush, the pirate not far behind him, grinning evilly.

*

Jack led them up along dark goat trails, exhorting Sparrow from time to time, and insisting that they shouldn’t begin to drink until they reached their destination. Which turned out to be a grassy clearing at the top of the eastern cliff. He stood there, puffing slightly and waiting for Sparrow, and looked out. The moon was full and fatly gold, its reflection flickering across the waves, and the Milky Way made a vivid band of brightness across the sky. Waves crashed and broke against the bottom of the cliff, a muted roar far below the island’s silence.

“Pretty, ain’t it?” said a low voice, very close beside him.

“Be prettier in ten minutes,” said Jack, pulling the rag from the top of his bottle. “Cheers, Jack Sparrow, and to your health and mine.”

“Aye,” said Sparrow, raising his drink. “To us – a fine pair of fuckin’ lobsters.” This last was said with a smile, but Jack knew the man well enough by now to hear the bitterness beneath. He took a deep (lovely!) draught, and sat down on the grass, before saying, “D’you really think they’ll try to come for you, then?”

He watched the profile beside him. Sparrow’s jaw was set, his gaze far out on the horizon. After a long moment, he said (with a notable measure of bravado), “’Course they will, why wouldn’t they?”

“Why indeed?” said Jack, wanting to cheer Sparrow, wanting this to actually be a chance to laugh together, not commiserate. “It’s a miracle they’ve lasted this long without you.”

“Maybe they haven’t,” said Sparrow.

“Oh, will you please drink up before you talk yourself into jumping off the bloody cliff?” snapped Jack, and led by example. Sparrow took a long swallow, and gave a long sigh. Jack looked up in dismay at the sound; but the look on his companion’s face was more blissful than miserable. A slow smile, eyes closed in appreciation. A glisten of liquid on that plump bottom lip – _oh, stop looking!_

“That,” said Sparrow, “hits a number of spots.” And he tilted back his head, opened his throat, and downed nearly half the bottle.

“Jesus,” said Jack, watching in awe.

Sparrow laughed. “Pirate,” he said. “You’ll find out, when you get on board.”

“Oh, so now you’re not only making it back to your ship, you’re also taking me with you. You’re definitely regaining your optimism.”

“I told you I’d take you with me, and more than once by my recall. I owe you, mate.”

Jack said nothing to that; his mind was suddenly full of _why_ he was owed. And he was hard again. He drank, determinedly.


	5. Chapter 5

  


By the time they were down to the dregs, Jack Shaftoe knew all about life on board the _Black Pearl,_ and why it was the best pirate vessel in the Caribbean (“Nay! The entire _ocean_!”), and the glorious freedom of piratical ways, and why the _Pearl_ would, without any doubt, one day be Jack Sparrow’s.

Jack Sparrow knew all about why Jack Shaftoe wanted never to reach a point where he was forced to take the King’s shilling (“Or Leroy’s franc, or an Elector’s thaler, or any other promissory nonsense they care to come up with,”) and why the only honest way of life was a Vagabond way, in which a man could make his own decisions and be beholden to no-one at all.

Shaftoe knew that Sparrow hated imprisonment most for the absence of entertainment, the predictability of each day, the sheer ugliness of the place, and the dearth of rum. (“So I thank you, from the bottom of my sugar-pickled heart, for rectifying at least one of those, Jack, and occasionally one or two of the others an’ all.”)

Sparrow knew that Shaftoe hated imprisonment most for the absence of entertainment, and the predictability of each day, and the dearth of women. Which claim made him raise an eyebrow in query.

“D’you miss them that badly, Jack? Me, I find that without them, at least I’m slapped about the face less regularly.”

“Don’t _men_ slap you about the face?” said Shaftoe, attempting to look serious, but giggling despite himself.

“Not as much,” said Sparrow, with narrowed eyes. “They’re easier to please.”

“P’rhaps so,” slurred Shaftoe, “but right now I wouldn’t much care whether she was pleased or no, as long as she could temp-temporarily relieve me of _this_!” And he staggered to his feet, gesturing towards the sizeable problem which, as long as he was sat next to Jack Sparrow, with a bellyful of rum, could not be dismissed by even the most focussed thoughts of Bob’s disapproval. And Shaftoe could not be said to be focussed at this particular moment.

Sparrow fell about laughing. When he could speak again, he wiped his eyes, and said, “Jack Shaftoe, you’re nothing but a pretty idiot.” (Shaftoe scowled, more at the adjective than the epithet.) “That manner of relief’s a particular talent of mine. Why in the Devil’s name did you not say?”

“Say what?” said Shaftoe, drunkenly mystified, sitting back down on the grass.

Sparrow leaned close, dangling the all-but-empty bottle between two fingers. The intensity of his gaze speared Jack Shaftoe, whose fingers twitched with an urge to touch That Mouth. Which slowly opened, and spoke.

“Say that you wanted me,” it said, in apparent seriousness.

“I don’t,” said Shaftoe, but it was an automatic reaction, and he might as well not have said it, for all the notice that his corpus took of it.

“Liar,” said The Mouth, and grinned.

“And why would I want you?” said Shaftoe, a question which was addressed as much to himself as to Sparrow.

“Why would _I_ want _you_?” asked The Mouth, smiling viciously.

“I don’t know. Do you?” said Shaftoe, too drunk and horny to be artful, not that artfulness ever played a major role in his conversational repertoire.

“Why should I tell you,” sulked The Mouth, “if you don’t want me?”

Shaftoe stared at it, and started to laugh. “I knew it!” he crowed. “ _Just_ like a woman’s mouth.”

Sparrow scowled. “I beg your pardon, but it’s no such thing!”

“Certainly it is…” said Shaftoe, and all the laughter left him, and this time he could no longer hold back the urge, and reached out a finger and ran it gently over the ample curve of bottom lip, which made him bite his own, and The Mouth opened slightly. Shaftoe, almost hypnotised by it, slid his finger inside, into the dark wetness, and his cock swelled unbearably.

 _Oh, Jesus_. He tried to regain control of his bodily elements, and the finger at least obeyed him. Sparrow was staring at him with a frighteningly ravenous look, and one oddly elegant hand was now grasping his shoulder, and that voice, like smooth pebbles on a riverbed, had a note of urgency as it said, “But have you ever known a woman’s mouth like _this_?”

And then, oh then, it was upon his, and strong hands gripped his skull, and The Mouth was, was… was hot and sweet with rum, and forceful, and would brook no argument as it parted his lips with its tongue. Was tasting him and taking him and devouring him in a way no woman ever had. Was everything that his dreams had intimated it would be. Shaftoe made a strangled noise, and let go of his grip on the small part of his consciousness that was reminding him that Jack Sparrow was a _man_ – a fact which, though indisputable, was temporarily so thoroughly irrelevant that it could not possibly be worth the grey matter required to house it.

And having let go of that, he found it an easy matter to indulge his Imp, and engage The Mouth on its own terms, and enter into the spirit of the thing; and he kissed Sparrow back, with months’ worth of pent-up enthusiasm. In his warm rum-reverie, it was the most fabulous kiss he’d ever indulged in, and every movement of Sparrow’s tongue, every slide of his lips, seemed to reach deep and far, out to the extremities of his body; and to fill them with warmth, and desire, and happiness.

Sparrow broke away, and knelt, inches from Shaftoe, his heart hammering. So _that_ was Jack Shaftoe when he wasn’t being offhand, or fiercely disinterested! Oh, that… that was definitely worth pursuing. For brief moments, the two stared at each other.

Jack Sparrow saw flushed lips, and shining eyes, and flaring nostrils in a square and handsome face, a face that, suddenly, he wanted a lot more from. Till now, he’d mostly wanted just to break through the façade and make Shaftoe admit what he wanted; now, suddenly, he wanted ten times that, he wanted not only to give Shaftoe what he desired, but have it returned freely to him with all Shaftoe’s strength and straightforward warmth.

And as for Jack Shaftoe, he saw a familiar face, and opened his eyes to the fact that it was beautiful, wholly and in its entirety, and not for one single feature, and not for being the closest he could get to a woman, but for being Jack Sparrow. And opened his mind to the fact that Jack Sparrow would be able to bring him pleasure _because he was Jack Sparrow_ , and was sly and courageous and funny and one of the sexiest things that Shaftoe had ever seen, regardless of what lay between his legs.

Oh, fuck. He was very drunk, and very desperate, and weren’t they fine reasons for acting contrary to his nature? Could he not be excused, just this once?

Shaftoe grabbed Sparrow’s shoulders, and pulled him down, fastening his mouth once more on those tempting lips. Sparrow lay half on top of him (and the sensation of that quite obliterated the pressing discomfort of a heavy iron shackle pressing into his shin) kissing him voraciously; and he felt burned by the proximity of skin, only two rather holed and dirty layers of cotton between them. He pushed his hands up into Sparrow’s hair, ridiculously thick and soft, heavy in his hands, and he arched his neck, exposing his throat to the pirate’s mouth just as he had that night, wanting to feel all that he’d felt then, and more besides. Sparrow’s white-hot tongue was on his skin, circling wetly up beside his ear, and he pushed up against him, feeling Sparrow’s hardness against his hip, and finding it all the more arousing for being odd, and forbidden, and Something He Wasn’t Supposed To Want. The contrariness that lurked in Shaftoe’s core was loving every moment of this. _Look at me, Bob_ , it whispered. _Haha, look at me! What do you think of **this** , eh!_

And he wanted that skin, that dark golden skin, against his own; and his wayward hands plucked and pulled at Sparrow’s shirt, pushing it up out of the way, roughly till he heard a hiss of pain and remembered the state of the other man’s back, and then carefully as he pulled it clear of the scabbed mess and helped Sparrow pull it over his head; and there it was again, that supple torso that his fingers had ached for. He pushed his own shirt out of the way, and groaned as skin touched his, and bit the golden shoulder that he could reach, his tongue sliding over smooth flesh and then catching on the sharp hard ridges of scabbed blood, and he bit these too, and Sparrow made a noise in his ear that was half cry and half laugh. Shaftoe wanted, very badly, to roll the other man over onto his back, and lay upon him, but could not for fear of hurting him further; and instead, expressed his need to be just marginally in charge by reaching down between them and grasping Sparrow’s cock, an action which sent a fabulous charge of ridiculous forbidden-ness through him, and he could not have said (and indeed, was not actively considering) whether this was a charge of sexual desire or the simple joy of evil; regardless, he hadn’t felt this spectacularly good in a considerable while.

Sparrow growled to feel the hand upon him, and lifted his hips to give access, pushing his breeches down; Shaftoe’s hand was keen and sure, and Sparrow indulged himself briefly by ignoring the other man entirely and concentrating purely on his own sensations. He closed his eyes and bit his lip, holding himself above Shaftoe, knowing in some corner of his mind how this made the muscles of his shoulders and arms curve in strong relief, and finding himself all the more amusing for knowing it. Shaftoe, mazy drunken Shaftoe, groaned and tugged and arched and pushed, wrapping a long strong leg around Sparrow’s thighs, and then pulled the pirate down for another scorching, desperate kiss. He was artless, and eager, and strong, and much as Sparrow wanted to draw this out, he knew that Shaftoe was in no state to accept much in the way of teasing and tempting.

Sparrow pushed his face into the warm crook of Shaftoe’s neck, resting on an elbow, freeing his other hand to explore firmly down the flat stomach beneath him. “Jack,” he muttered, “Jack, what do you want?” And then, because it was still his main understanding of what a man such as Jack Shaftoe might want from him, “D’you want to fuck me, Jack?”

But he regretted this in moments, as the hand on his cock stopped moving, and the hips that were pressed up into him subsided to the ground, and a rather confused voice said, “No, I don’t think… no,” and Sparrow grasped tight hold of his scattered wits and, to recover the situation, said, “Excellent, I’ve a better idea,” and shimmied backwards, tugging at ragged trousers as he went, till he was presented with the full glory of a naked Jack Shaftoe, propped on his elbows, hair even more awry than usual (and full of leaves) gazing at him bemusedly.

“You didn’t let me before… but I’d lay you want it now, don’t you?” Sparrow murmured, running fingertips lightly over the trembling abdomen before him.

“Oh, yes,” said Shaftoe helplessly, thinking that it must surely be a preferable alternative to buggery, and Christ, if this enticing savage didn’t do _something_ soon, he’d have no choice but to come regardless. And this seemed to be the right thing to say, for there was a flash of gold in the dim light, and Shaftoe fell backwards and covered his eyes with his hands as he felt a shimmer of hair on his bare thighs, and then _oh fuck_ tongue, and he twitched upwards at the sensation, which, though it was utter pleasure in and of itself, was also a clear harbinger of far greater.

This suspicion proved to be thoroughly grounded, as hot hands slid over his thighs, pushing between them to fondle the tightening flesh there, and The Mouth, a creature of lava and light, descended upon him; and though a brief consideration flickered through Jack Shaftoe’s mind, primarily regarding why exactly Sparrow felt an urge to bestow this glory upon him, it was clear that, whatever the other man’s motivations, he was certainly bestowing with gusto; so Shaftoe quelled it, and decided to appreciate the gift. For gift it was, a gift of flickering intense delight, a gift of pleasure that was entirely controlled by the (gifted) giver; and the recipient’s writhing trembles, and clutching hands, and the babbling stream of delighted profanity that Sparrow seemed to be sucking forth from him, all stood proud testament to his appreciation and gratitude.

So great was his gratitude, in fact, that Shaftoe felt honour bound to advise his benefactor that there were, in fact, mere seconds to get the hell out of the way if he did not wish to be half-drowned by the release of several months’ pent-up humours; but if he expected this to result in a lessened intensity of experience, he was disappointed, for the pirate clutched at his hips all the harder, and opened his throat, and took Jack Shaftoe’s cock further into the human oesophagus than he would have suspected possible. Jack shrieked and stiffened and was temporarily blinded, deafened, and otherwise stupefied by what was surely and sweetly one of the more monumental climaxes of his life to date.

Jack Sparrow tried not to grin. He waited to feel the body beneath his hands relax, and stop twitching its way through aftershocks, before slowly releasing the relaxing organ. The urge to say _I told you so_ was viciously overwhelming, but he fought it manfully for several moments before conceding defeat.

“And are you still suffering under the misapprehension that your life can’t be complete without a woman, Jack?”

Shaftoe opened his mouth, but nothing emerged. Which indicated that he had no idea what the answer to that question might be. He pushed himself back up onto his elbows, shaking his head to clear it; but clarity was not to be his, for the sight of a still naked and thoroughly aroused Sparrow kneeling between his thighs was more than a little disorienting. Shaftoe stared with a dizzy hunger at that lovely flesh, darkened by sun, now both silvered and shadowed by moon; and though his satiation was most thorough, he recognised the inequality of the situation, and that he really should attempt some sort of reciprocity.

On the other hand, he really wasn’t terribly certain of the protocol (not that Jack Shaftoe and protocol were terribly close friends at the best of times).

“Um,” he said, eloquently. “D’you, um…?” and gestured vaguely in the direction of the other man’s enthusiasm.

“Absolutely,” agreed Sparrow, with a smile that made it perfectly clear he wasn’t going to put an end to Shaftoe’s most enjoyable discombobulation any time soon.

“Alright then,” said Shaftoe, “Come here,” and he beckoned Sparrow back down, laying himself upon the cool grass, wanting that body upon his own again, that mouth back on his; and finding that, once he had been granted them, satiation ebbed surprisingly rapidly and was replaced with a familiar weighty ache. He tried to be mindful of the pirate’s back, but sometimes plain forgot, and it was so hard not to wrap his arms around and crush him closer, closer; so the kisses they shared were interspersed with mewls of pain, and hissed apologies, till Shaftoe decided that his clumsy hands should be put to better use anyway. So with one he reached down between them, and took the heavy silky yard in hand (grinning against The Mouth as he felt the tremble that his touch elicited) and with the other he explored somewhere else, somewhere he’d had a yen to explore since that Sunday Service; and yes, indeed, that arse was every bit as sweetly curved and velvet-warm as Sparrow’s caressing knuckle had implied, and Shaftoe… oh, god, Shaftoe _loved_ it, and laughed out loud at the idea the Imp presented to him, with a look of delighted wickedness on its face.

He writhed out from under, keeping his grip on Sparrow’s cock, and raised his eyebrows, grinning, at Sparrow’s look of query; held the other man in place as he climbed over one nicely muscled leg; and there it was before him, a truly lovely backside, even more palely perfect in contrast to the ugly welted lines on that poor back. Shaftoe kicked protocol off the cliff and did what he felt an urge to do, which was to lie between Sparrow’s legs and let his tongue explore those pretty curves; which his tongue found so delightful and entertaining that in no time it had convinced his lips and teeth that this was a game worth playing. Sparrow’s hips moved and curved, now pushing down into Shaftoe’s fisted hand, now lifting to the suction of his mouth, and even in the night-light Shaftoe could see livid welts arising where his mouth had been, which only made him want to bite more.

Sparrow arched and hissed like a snake, and couldn’t but appreciate Jack Shaftoe’s ignorance, that it should lead to such inventiveness; and what’s more, couldn’t but anticipate a less ignorant future, in which Jack Shaftoe knew of even better uses to which he could put his deliciously muscular tongue. The thought of which drove him rapidly to the edge of that radiant abyss, where he hung suspended and breathless for long and lovely moments before falling, and falling, and falling, feeling Shaftoe’s strong hands grip him as he twitched, biting his lip to keep from crying their shared name.

He buried his face on his forearms, breathing hard. Oh, yes. That felt good. And somehow, Shaftoe’s delicious unfamiliarity with all the methods of pleasing another man had made such simple solutions all the more… effective. But this was probably not a thought that Shaftoe would appreciate. So instead, his sharp and wicked tongue said, “See? You’d fit right in on board a pirate vessel, Jack Shaftoe.” And his arse paid the price for such flippant cruelty as Shaftoe’s palm connected with it, hard.

“Contrary to recent appearances,” said Shaftoe with an uncharacteristic archness that was doubtless a result of the certain degree of pride generated by the vivid result of his actions, “I’ve no interest in whatever degeneracies you indulge in with your company.”

Sparrow sat up, took Shaftoe’s surprised face between his warm palms, and kissed him roundly. “Company?” he said. “Why, Jack, the company can be damned; there ain’t a man in it to compare to you, my friend.”

Shaftoe, now recovered from his maddened lust, flushed and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, which only made Sparrow laugh. “I told you,” he reiterated firmly, “I’m not your catamite.”

Sparrow sighed with mock disappointment. “Such _stubbornness_ , Jack. Surely you’ve noticed recently that some things ain’t quite as terrible as you seem to’ve been led to believe?”

“Well, it does seem reasonably obvious that there would be some fundamental physical unpleasantness involved,” persisted Jack.

“Only to the uninformed, mate.” The look of wicked delight, bubbling under a haze of lazy satiety, was almost irresistible. Jack quelled the twitch of his lips, and said nothing, instead climbing rather unsteadily to his feet. The sky was lightening in the east.

“Better get back, adventure’s over,” he said, a little sadly, and held down a hand to pull the other man up. Sparrow sighed heavily, and took the proffered hand, enjoying the touch of dry, callused palm.

“And a most delightful adventure it was, Jack, and I thank you for the invitation to share your fine liquor. And your fine…” (Trailing off, with a grin.) “For the former of which I presume we have Sergeant Dudley to thank… and d’you think he’ll be able to supply further?… and is this my shirt?” (Poking at one of the ragged garments on the ground.)

“No, and mine,” said Shaftoe, and scrambled into it, turning his back on the pirate, and scouting for his missing trousers.

“Come on, now, don’t be like that,” chided Sparrow, pouting. “Don’t go getting all regretful on me, it was fun, and no harm done.” He put a hand out, gripping Jack’s arm. But was sad to see the walls coming back down again, to see the Jack Shaftoe of ten minutes ago, who had been so wholly himself and wholly wild, turning back into A Man Who Didn’t.

Jack Shaftoe, luckily, was a man who had no use for regret. He shrugged, and grinned, and said, “No harm, but one word to the boys and I’ll take an interesting revenge, I promise you.”

“Ooh, goody, a secret, I love secrets.”

“And I’m sure you’ve plenty… come on, get dressed.”

“Aye, aye…” Sparrow found his battered clothing, and stepped into those too-small breeches, turning his back on Jack with an arch of eyebrow as he pulled them up; and Jack couldn’t help but laugh, almost admiringly, at the man’s ability to pull up breeches in a manner (slowly, and exerting _just_ the right amount of pressure over his arse, so as to leave nothing to the imagination – not that there was much there with which Jack’s imagination, or indeed, waking eyes, were unfamiliar) that was nothing short of _graphickal_.

But the display was interrupted; Sparrow first froze, then walked rapidly and determinedly to the cliff-edge, donning his remaining clothing with lightning speed, and first muttering, and then crying, “I don’t believe it… d’you see her, Jack? D’you see her? There, there!”

Jack ran up behind him, peering out over the black sea, cold against the greying horizon; and yes, there it was, he could make out the dark shape of a ship, approaching them from the nor’-east.

Sparrow grabbed him by both shoulders, thin fingers gripping him mercilessly, and spun him round till they were face to face. The pirate’s expression was a mixed storm of joy and fear, the fading moonlight still shining in those black eyes in a way that twisted Jack’s stomach, and he shook Jack as he cried, “That’s my _Pearl_ , Jack! She’s come for me!”


	6. Chapter 6

  


Jack Shaftoe heard the words, and a tremor ran up his spine.

For all Sparrow’s certainty, Jack’d never really believed that this supposedly-semi-legendary ship would come back for its First Mate. It seemed to be a course of action that bordered dangerously on _honourable_ or _loyal_ \- something that he’d expect more from His Majesty’s Boys than a band of self-described cutthroats.

 _But **you’d** come back for Jack Sparrow, wouldn’t you?_ whispered something, tremulously implike, in his mind’s ear. Jack ignored it. He had a more pressing concern.

It was bothering Jack inordinately that Sparrow assumed that he would be taking a newcomer on board. In fact – if Jack recalled correctly – Sparrow had never actually bothered to ask whether his new mate had any desire whatsoever to abscond on the _Pearl_ ; and yet, having assumed thus far, seemed to assume further that the act of landing on her fabled black decks would lead, without question, to a desire to remain upon them. And Jack really, really, really did not like his actions to be taken as read.

And if he were to board, what then? Was there not yet another clear assumption in the air, being that this night’s activities were not only up for repetition, but expansion? There Jack’d be, on board a pirate vessel, manned by the most fearsome men in the Caribbean, and the only one he’d know would be the one who, by his own admission and actions, had definite designs on Jack’s tiny remnant of innocence.

This train of thought triggered sudden memories throughout Jack’s body, and (but only because he was tired and still rather drunk, mind) he all but staggered under their onslaught.

So there was at least one reason to go, then.

But there were so many others _not_ to go. What about Tom and Mick? They were mates, in this mess together, and Jack had to confess to himself that a fairly large proportion of the mess they had managed to get themselves into was in some way able to be traced back to his own activities. What sort of friend, what sort of man, would he be if he left them behind? It simply couldn’t be done.

The sun was half up over the horizon, speckling the grey ocean with peachy silver, and bringing the great ship into clearer view. She was turning to the west, and would soon be rounding the island, coming within sight, and then range, of the guns. Sparrow was cursing and stamping and waving his arms around, but was entirely invisible up here at the top of the great cliff, in the shadow of the woods.

Jack snapped out of his motionless reverie and joined in to help his friend, hollering and waving, since, whatever he himself decided, Sparrow still needed to get to his ship; and he picked up his empty bottle, heaving it with all his might towards the _Black Pearl_. It disappeared with barely a splash, a faint flicker of reflected light marking its passage.

“Aah!” shrieked Sparrow, as if possessed by an idea that might have some practical utility; and he grabbed at one of his knotted braids, that hung down the left hand side of his face, a braid that ended in a flat disc of dirty gold. He twisted at it, and tugged, his head and hand fighting to separate it from his hair. “Get it off, Jack, cut it, cut it!”

Jack ran to the other empty bottle, and smashed it upon a rock, taking up a razored shard, and slicing at the braid. The hair gave way, and Sparrow pulled off the gold circle, other beads popping off in its wake. He spat upon it, and pulled up the bottom of his shirt, polishing madly, till it lost its grimy skin and shone out; then held it carefully ‘twixt finger and thumb, and angled it towards the rising sun.

And thus, with glint and shine – the same way he attracted the attention of everyone, really – he called to his Captain, and his ship, and his freedom.

In moments, there was an answering flash from the ship; and small figures darted around her deck, and swarmed up into her rigging, and with slow grace her course began to alter.

“Yes! Yes! Come to us, darling, come to us!” cried Sparrow, joy writ clear on his face.

“Well, mate, two things I must point out,” interrupted Jack, tapping him on the shoulder. “Firstly, she can come as close as she likes, but you’re still stuck on top of this island; and secondly, she isn’t coming for _us_ , she’s coming for _you_ , and I really do need to take my leave of you now, if I’m to have even the slightest chance of getting back without anyone remarking upon my absence. And very bloody slight it is,” he added, gazing at the sun, which had just released itself from the horizon’s grip.

Sparrow had turned, and was staring at him in irritated confusion. “What _are_ you blithering on about, Jack Shaftoe? Of course you’re coming with me, don’t be ridiculous.”

Jack twitched at the flare of anger in his chest. “There’s no ‘of course’ about it, and I’m not leaving my mates behind,” he said, sharply. “Besides which, you can’t get to your ship anyway.”

“Of course I fucking can, she’ll be right below us soon.”

“She’ll be a damn long way below you, to be more accurate.”

Sparrow went closer to the edge, and peered down, eyes narrowed. “It’s doable… waves aren’t breaking till the very foot, I think it’s deep. Well, it might knock us senseless actually, but _Pearl_ ’ll be near enough for someone to do the decent thing and come and get us before we drown.”

“Stop this ‘us’ nonsense! I told you, I’m going. So goodbye, and good luck, and it’s been… enlightening.” And Jack stuck out his hand, a resolute look on his face.

Sparrow took it, with a crafty expression, and held tight. “See, now,” he said, “I could just take you with me.” And he jerked on Jack’s arm. Jack’s heart lurched and he wrenched free. And the lurch told him clearly that there was no fucking way he was going off that cliff.

“Goodbye, Jack,” he said, and (taking one last look at that distracting, entertaining, - goddammit, _beautiful_ \- face) turned on his heel and walked back into the woods.

“Jack!” he heard, but nothing more. And then he was back amongst the trees, and away from all the treacherous, dangerous things behind him – away from clifftop plunges, and ships full of unnecessarily vicious pirates, and ridiculously enticing savages. Was making his way back to where he should be, back to his mates, back to –

_Jesus Christ, Jack Shaftoe, are you quite mad? Back to imprisonment, and a hanging; and when did the word “should” enter your vocabulary, as anything more than invective?_

Jack stopped short, astonished to realise that he’d just walked away from what surely must have been the most fabulous opportunity for risk and adventure that had ever been presented to him. Damnation, was this what it felt like to be Bob? To be the Sensible One? Perhaps so, for the feeling in his chest was most definitely a foreign one, and he found it neither comfortable nor enjoyable. He turned, torn; and through the curtaining trees, saw Sparrow standing, slight and elegant, on the cliff edge; saw him raise a hand, and could not tell from the silhouetted shape whether he did so in greeting to his shipmates, or farewell to Jack himself; and then saw him take two running paces and throw himself from the precipice.

Gone.

And the absence was… not to be borne. It gouged a gaping black hole in his chest, out of which his Imp leaned, keening, reaching skinny beseeching arms towards the sea; and Jack, suddenly desperate, began to run; first grinning, then laughing, and finally shouting (in glee as he realised how happy he was with this decision, and then in pain as he ran over the broken bottle, and finally in visceral terror as he hurled himself from the cliff and felt the terrifying sensation of unstoppable descent); and then something hit him, and it felt much the way he thought it might feel if a cavalry battalion should decide to ride over the top of you. All breath was driven from him, and he was encased in cold, and struggled, and had no idea for a while which way was up, and it was all terrifyingly familiar and reminiscent of his most recent escape from death; but luckily for Jack, the familiarity continued, and a dark shape, trailing silver bubbles, swooped down on him, and dragged him up to the light.

They broke the surface, and Sparrow was laughing, and clutching the spluttering Jack to him, and he crowed, “I knew you couldn’t fucking resist it!”

*

The two buccaneers in the longboat greeted Sparrow with smiles and happy cries, and pulled him first aboard, then peered at Jack; and one curled a lip over blackened teeth and said, “D’ye want him, Jack, or shall we leave him?”

Jack decided not to give them the choice, and grabbed a rowlock, and the second pirate was baring his gums and about to rap his knuckles with an oar before Sparrow finished waving up at the faces leaning down from the _Pearl_ and turned, saying, “Jimmy Riddle, get that man aboard this second, or it’ll be you as gets left here,” and Jack was unceremoniously hauled over the side, till he lay dripping and panting in the bottom of the boat, with two of the ugliest men he’d ever had the misfortune to see (and let us not forget, in making such a claim, that Jack Shaftoe grew up in the post-plague Isle of Dogs) staring down upon him.

“Hello gents,” said Jack, “and my thanks to you both.” They stared at him wordlessly.

“Now, now, boys, let’s not waste good intimidation,” said Sparrow cheerfully. “This is my good friend Jack Shaftoe, otherwise known as Pretty Jack-”

“I am fucking not!” (But even as he bothered to protest, Jack suspected it was bootless.)

“-and Jack, meet Jimmy Riddle, and no, you don’t want to know why,” (the toothless horror raised his chin in greeting) “and Pug Malone. Now, boys, are you taking me home, or are we off on some sort of sabbatical?”

Jack managed to sit up, and clambered onto the rough board slung across the bow of the boat, where Sparrow also sat; Pug and Jimmy took an oar each, and began to row. The _Pearl_ soon loomed above them, and by Christ, she was a sizeable craft. Black as pitch, her hull and sails; every inch the pirate vessel, lovingly designed with only one thing in mind; the instant terrorising of every other ship with which she might cross paths.

Over the railings atop her vertiginous stern hung a row of faces, shouting and waving down. Jack stared up as Sparrow ran a pointing finger along them, naming them, muttering about each: “On the end there, that little speck, Goliath, useless, good for nothing but a powder-monkey though he’s nigh on fourteen he claims; Red James, good man; oh, and Bill Turner, Bootstrap, best man aboard, till I’m back up there nat’rally; Black James, Red’s brother, good in a tight spot but terrible mad, the pox got him a long while back; that cove with the grim look, that’s Barbossa, clever man, but don’t get on his wrong side, and,” (voice dropping now to a whisper, very close to Jack’s cold, wet ear) “I should warn you that he’s perfectly desperate to fuck yours truly,” (and a very hot, wet tongue briefly warmed that cold, wet ear, making Jack grit his teeth) “but I shan’t let ‘im; and there, next to him, there’s the Captain, the finest pirate in the Caribbean.”

Jack craned upward, firstly to see the man who wanted to fuck Jack Sparrow, and that was a little disturbing, for he was a tall and surly creature, with an expression that said he’d as soon murther as fuck; and secondly to see the finest pirate in the Caribbean, and he was a sight and no mistake. As flamboyant as Jack could imagine Sparrow to be, given access to the right (stolen) goods; a multitude of gold and baubles, a froth of lace at his throat, a wondrously waxed and curled moustache above a fierce smile; curling black hair falling into squinting, assessing eyes; a bright green frock coat, that set off the deeply blackened skin of a man who’d barely left the deck of a ship since he came to double digits. A boy’s dream of a pirate, made life.

The fierce smile, however, was all for Sparrow, who was pulled into a quick embrace as soon as his feet touched the deck; when the Captain’s gaze turned to Jack, it sat in an altogether more forbidding visage. Jack stuck his chin in the air and faced it down.

“And who’ve you brought us, Jack, and to what point and purpose?” said John Tobias, looking up and down the tatterdemalion before him.

Sparrow clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder, as the company gathered round. “Captain,” he said, in the tone of one conferring a rare and special pleasure, “I present to you the man who’s saved my hide, and returned me to you… Mr Jack Shaftoe.”

Jack, delighted though he was to hear that he’d played such a pivotal role in developments, was slightly mystified. He played dumb, and grinned vacantly.

“Shaftoe here was the only man among the lot of ‘em who volunteered to help me when I’d a plan to perform some mischief on those long nines… and though it failed, and” (gesturing to his own back) “I’ve the stripes to prove it, still he didn’t fail you, boys; for every night, Shaftoe and I’ve been standing watch up on that damn cliff-top, knowing you would come, and knowing that we’d a duty to protect this fine ship and steer her clear of harm.”

These words flowed, bright and true as milk, from the pirate’s smiling mouth; and Jack had to admire him for it. “Aye,” he said solemnly. “And long, long nights they’ve been.”

“Aye,” said Sparrow, with a nod and a sigh, as if recalling many watchful hours; and then perked up, and said with a grin, “So I’ve brought him with me as a token of our gratitude, and what say you – if the _Pearl_ ’s to his liking, and he to hers, not to mention ours, shall we keep him?”

There was certainly no chorus of agreement, but none of disagreement either, though Jack noted interesting expressions on more than one face; calculating amusement on the part of the Captain, and he’d swear a flare of anger – or mayhap jealousy – from what-was-his-name, Barbossa.

“And what use are you to us, Shaftoe?” asked the Captain, suddenly. “Under whose command have you sailed? Have you a decent sword-arm?”

Jack paused for a moment, wondering how to best break the news that he didn’t know one end of a ship from t’other, let alone have any of that strange and esoterickal knowledge of ropes and canvas, of wood and brass, of wind and wave, that seafarers gathered in their blood. But he didn’t need to speak, for Sparrow was speaking for him:

“He sailed with Tom Skene,” he said, with a sneer, “but not for long.” There was a mutter of dislike. Sparrow rode over the top of it. “But he’s had considerable military experience, has our Shaftoe, and he’s as good a man as any in a corner.”

“True,” said Jack, finding his voice before Sparrow could concoct any further lies that he’d have to recall and live by, “and I’m a fair horseman, an’ all.”

A silence greeted this claim, which, he belatedly realised, was irrelevant to the point of idiocy; which made him start to laugh, and Sparrow smirked at him, and soon the laughter was general. And yet, once again, two faces stood out, with no trace of amusement upon them. Jack quelled his mirth, and said, straightfaced, to the Captain, “I’ll do what I can, and learn what I can’t.” Which was received with a nod, and appeared to seal the bargain. Tobias turned back to Sparrow.

“Jack, my friend, we’ve certainly seldom seen you in such straitened sartorial circumstances; it’s a painful sight.” More laughter, and more smirking from Sparrow. “You’ll be pleased to know that we’ve had a couple of wonderfully productive encounters with our friends the Spanish lately… assuming you’d make it back to us, I asked Mr Turner to take pickings on your behalf, and they’re in your chest. And fix up Mr Shaftoe here while you’re at it. I imagine you’re both tired after” (did Jack imagine a wry twist of lips?) “all those nights sitting up and watching for us, so I’ll not add you to a watch today, but as of tomorrow, I’ll consider you both on duty. Now, if you’ve nothing more to tell me that can’t wait, I suggest we put these waters behind us.”

Sparrow said, “That sounds like a fine plan to me, Captain,” at the same moment as Jack blurted, “My friends are still back there, Captain”; and it was definitely Jack’s statement that resulted in narrowed eyes and a questioning stare.

“Your point being, Mr Shaftoe?” said Tobias, with a delicate sibilance that should have warned Jack, but didn’t.

“I can’t leave without ‘em,” said Jack, as Sparrow kicked him, not at all surreptitiously.

“All appearances to the contrary,” said the Captain coolly, “this is not a Samaritan vessel. Unless your ‘friends’ are made of something more valuable than Vagabond flesh, they hold no interest for me. So if you can’t leave ‘em, you’re welcome to return to ‘em, but you’ll have to swim.”

There was a small pause, during which Jack opened and shut his mouth like a landed fish, trying in vain to think of any redeeming feature which might make Mick and Tom worth rescuing; then Sparrow broke in again, saying, “See, gents, he’s a loyal one, ain’t he? Good man to have at your back. Be even better once I’ve dressed him like a human being. Come on, Jack.”

And he took Jack’s arm, and led him through the crowd, as the Captain issued a stream of mysterious orders, dealing with hauling, raising, belaying, and any number of things nautickal that meant nothing to a Vagabond come lately to the life of a pirate, but certainly seemed to be designed to effect their passage away from Turk’s Island with all due haste.

Sparrow’s shoulders, and occasionally his backside, were slapped by every man they passed; he grinned at all of them, and spoke with some, but didn’t stop, and didn’t let go his grip on Jack’s arm, which seemed to Jack to get hotter and tighter by the minute. The pirate led him down narrow stairs, belowdecks into a dark fuggy place where Jack had to duck his head or lose it, and he was glad of Sparrow’s grip as the ship turned into the waves and began to pitch and yaw, making him stumble against the walls.

“Careful,” came Sparrow’s low rumble ahead of him, a smile audible in it, “you’ll bruise, and they’ll think me a brute.”

Jack shrugged his arm free. “Oh, so it’s like that, then, is it,” muttered Sparrow, more to himself than Jack.

Sparrow ducked through a low doorway, and Jack followed him into a tiny cabin, containing a narrow bunk whose sheet looked none too clean, and a dark and battered sea-chest at its foot. Jack was most unsure of the wisdom of being here with this man; but there didn’t appear to be many reasonable alternatives open to him at that particular moment, and besides, the lure of a clean pair of trews was considerable.

Sparrow squeezed past him, theatrically careful not to touch, and pushed the door creakily shut so that he could kneel in front of it and get access to the chest. He pulled out first a blindingly white linen shirt, and made approving noises before holding it against himself, and then pronouncing, “No, more your size, you can have it,” and tossing it over his shoulder. In short order, he sorted through the new items, and threw Jack a pair of rough blue trousers, which were barely stained at all, and put a clean shirt for himself on the bed; then hissed through his teeth and murmured, “Oh, Bootstrap, you’ve a fine eye,” and pulled out a deep ruby frock coat, stroking it lovingly; “Look at this, Jack, ain’t it a thing of beauty?”

“It’s a _coat_ ,” said Jack, rolling his eyes, “not a Pareesian whore.”

“And yet,” said Sparrow, with a jovially coy look over his shoulder, “I’ll be just as irresistible as one, once I’m in it.”

“Oh, d’you think so, do you,” muttered Jack, ignoring the twitch in his pulse.

“Inevitable, I’m afraid. But, lucky you! You’re now safe from my depredations.”

This was a statement that should in theory have filled Jack with relief; as it was, the emotion in his breast felt more like suspicion, and suspiciously tinged with disappointment, at that.

“Fine…” said Jack, with the unfamiliar degree of caution that Sparrow seemed to engender in him, and then, “…Why?”

“Well, you’re crew now,” said Sparrow, standing. “And I’ve a rule about crew, which is, don’t. It’ll only lead to tears. Or rather, since this is a pirate vessel… it’ll likely lead to blood. Which is, in some ways, worse.” He grinned, and pulled his filthy and ragged shirt over his head. “I don’t know ‘bout you, mate, but I’m knackered, and I’m going to get me some sleep. There’s a spare hammock down here somewhere…” And he rummaged around under the bunk, dragging out a rolled hammock. “Here, you’re welcome to sling it up in here for now.”

The sight of something comfortable to sleep on was like laudanum to Jack’s tired bones, and he yawned, unstoppably. “Alright,” he said, and Sparrow helped him hang it from dull brass hooks on the black beams above.

The pirate peeled off his damp breeches, saying, “Don’t mind me, but I’ll sleep better without ‘em.” Jack, who was carefully not looking, merely grunted, and pulled off his own fouled shirt, but could not bring himself to divest further.

“Sleep well,” he said, with another yawn.

“I shall,” said Sparrow, “now that I’m back with my girl. Oh, and Jack?” Jack turned to him, and was pulled into a warm, comradely embrace. Well, it had every appearance of being such a thing, if one could ignore the fact that the embracer was entirely naked (something which Jack failed to do).

“Welcome to the _Black Pearl_ ,” said Jack Sparrow. “May you sleep safe in her arms.” And with a final slap of Shaftoe’s back, he sprawled onto his bunk, and was asleep before Shaftoe had finally managed to climb into the damn hammock without rolling out the other side.

*

Jack Sparrow slept long and well, a sleep pleasantly full of warm breezes and rolling waves and freedom and speed; the sort of rejuvenating slumber that came to him only at sea, where the coursing of the blood through his veins came to mimic the motion of the ship that carried him. Even the stentorian snoring with which, thanks to Shaftoe, he was sharing a cabin did not wake him; he became aware of it only once his dreams had ended, and he had drifted slowly back into his waking body.

Jack opened his eyes, and breathed deep of the _Pearl_ , and the sea, and – yes – just a little bit of Shaftoe too. He turned his head and smiled to see his companion, sleeping in a hammock like a man who’d never done so before – fighting against its embrace, his limbs ungainly, one leg lolling horizontally, the other pulled down by the weight of iron around its chafed ankle. In sleep his face was placid and content, an emptiness of expression that seldom saw the light of day, and Jack found himself staring at the length of the black lashes lying against that brown cheek, delightfully incongruous with the soft sandy moustache and beard.

Jack took his time, looking; he realised he’d had precious few chances to really, really look at Jack Shaftoe, without Shaftoe scowling at him, or telling him to take his eyes elsewhere before Shaftoe disposed of them for him, or simply ducking out of sight. And it was a most enjoyable sight; the hairs on his arms and legs, silvery pale against browned skin, and the lovely contrast of those parts of him that did not see the sun against those that did; the breadth of his shoulders, just the wrong side of bony after months a-prison; the shallow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed slow in sleep. Wide lips, flushed and warm, parted slightly, as if begging for…

Jack’s hand was halfway across the space between them, seeking skin, before he stopped it.

_No, no, no, Jack. You know what’ll work with this one. And that ain’t it. Patience, mate. Patience._

Silently, Jack climbed from his cot, and pulled on clean clothes; ran his fingers through his hair and tied a bandanna round his head; and finally, crouched by his chest, looked into a tiny silvered mirror and blackened his eyes against the sun.

“Welcome back,” he whispered to his mirrored self, and blew it a kiss.


	7. Chapter 7

  


When Jack Shaftoe awoke with his customary startle, he was alone in the tiny dim cabin. Sparrow was gone, along with his fine new clothes. Jack tried to sit up, and was pitched unceremoniously to the floor by the uncooperative hammock, at which he threw an evil glance and some choice words. Cursed thing. And, God’s teeth! what _had_ it done to his neck?

But now that he was alone, Jack could wriggle his way out of his crusted and tattered trousers, and enjoy a moment of bare skin on the sheets of Sparrow’s cot, which, while short and narrow, felt like a far more natural brace for a man’s spine than that diabolical canvas sack. Resting his head on a bent arm, he stared at the boards above him, considering all that’d passed.

_Dear Bob…_

_I am now (perhaps temporarily, but we’ll see) a member of the crew of the_ Black Pearl _, which, as I suspect you don’t know, is apparently the most fearsome pirate vessel in the Caribbean. Yes, I too imagine that they all say that. But I must say it looks the part, not to mention its marvellously assorted company. The Captain, Bob! What a lark!_

_Sadly, I’ve had to part company with Tom and Mick. But I’m still with that other fellow, the pirate, d’you recall me mentioning him? Sparrow. Long story there. Long, interesting story which I don’t believe you’ll ever hear in its entirety. In its short form, then: I succumbed to some degree of fornication with the man, Bob. I know, I know. But it had its pleasant moments, and there **are no women here** , as I may have mentioned previously. And honestly, the mouth on him!_

_Yes, really. But anyways, there’s no call to alarm yourself, for we’re shipmates now, and he follows a strict rule of non-engagement with the company. No, Bob, that’s what he said. Honestly, he made it perfectly clear._

_Which, oddly enough, makes me feel a little-”_

Jack sat up, a wide grin spreading over his face. “Oh, Jack Sparrow,” he muttered, “you’re a cunning one, I’ll give you that.” He couldn’t help but be impressed that the pirate had recognised, with such clarity, a fellow sufferer of the Imp’s ravages, and known how easily they could be set off. Still, reasoned Jack, there are few games in this world that cannot be played by two.

All this thought of Jack Sparrow, and misbehaviour, and game-playing, had woken his blood; and he closed his eyes, and a hand crept down to his thickening cock; but, now that he listened, all around him were the noises of men; now running overhead, now crying orders in the distance, now thundering along the narrow corridor, and shouldering the door; so Jack restrained himself, thinking that it wouldn’t do, on a man’s first day aboard, to be caught in the First Mate’s cot, polishing his equipment. Instead, he pulled on the clothes that Sparrow had put out for him (and how strangely pleasant it was, to wear something that didn’t smell of a hundred old versions of himself that had been left out to rot) and ventured out.

*

There followed several days in which Jack Sparrow:-

\- Worked hard to re-ingratiate himself with his Captain, and to fully express, without saying so many words, his appreciation of the fact that he was no longer sitting, filthy, in the dirt of Turk’s Island;  
\- Invented lurid and legion stories of the lengths he had gone to in his attempts to protect the _Pearl_ while he was there;  
\- Was finally released from the hard-edged embrace of his shackle, which he threw, ceremonially, from the highest yardarm;  
\- Re-established himself on the dangerous-but-useful tightrope he walked with Barbossa, which ensured that the Second Mate’s thoughts were horribly dominated by Jack’s slender physique, without Jack’s ever making it utterly clear that said physique was something that he would never actually experience first-hand;  
\- Set up Jack Shaftoe on the same watch as Bill Turner, and ensured that Bill would see he was treated fairly, and given chances to learn the things he needed to learn (this required no effort on Sparrow’s part; Bill Turner did this for all new men);  
\- Did everything humanly possible (and several things which some might not have classified thus) to ensure that Jack Shaftoe saw more than his fair share of the unavailable delights that constituted the person of the _Pearl_ ’s First Mate;  
\- Never let Jack Shaftoe see that he was being watched;  
\- Seldom stopped watching Jack Shaftoe;  
\- Was occasionally forced to resort to nasty dark corners of the ship to relieve himself of the accumulating pressure of watching Jack Shaftoe.

And in which Jack Shaftoe:-

\- Learned a lot, fast, about making himself less of a liability, and eventually even a minor helpmeet, to the company; and about those in the company who could be trusted, and those who must not, under any circumstances;  
\- Was freed from his shackle, which he deemed appropriate to be dropped from the heads;  
\- Fretted, irregularly, about Tom Flinch and Mick Gully;  
\- Decided that, on the evidence to date, he wasn’t averse to the life of a pirate;  
\- Discovered that there were a number of men in the company who did not seem to share Jack Sparrow’s purported rule;  
\- Admitted to himself (with a degree of relief, in the face of this discovery) that it was only Jack Sparrow who made him regret the purported existence of the purported rule;  
\- Slept badly in the swaying hammock, still slung next to Sparrow’s bed, and particularly so when he was not alone in the cabin;  
\- Was driven to regular distraction by the sight of the First Mate, who seemed to be in perpetual motion around him - invariably motion which revealed his strength, or agility, or flexibility, and frequently motion which appeared to require the removal of clothing;  
\- Never let Jack Sparrow see that he was being watched, and being distracting;  
\- Was occasionally forced, against his better judgment, to resort to nasty dark corners of the ship to relieve himself of the accumulating pressure of watching the distracting Jack Sparrow.

It was mere moments before the incipient achievement of such an instance of relief that he was hailed out of the dark by the thin, wall-eyed Ragetti. Jack hastily reconstituted his person, leaving his shirt untucked to cover the evidence. “Here,” he called irritably, “I’m here, where’s the fire?”

“Don’t say that, it’s bad luck,” said the whey-faced creature, looming up out of the dimness.

“What d’ye want me for, then?”

Ragetti failed to respond, instead sloshing closer through the bilgewater, and demanding, “What’re you doing down ‘ere, anyway, I been lookin’ all over for you.”

“I’ve been avoiding _you_ , mate,” said Jack, not entirely in jest, but clapping a hand on the bony shoulder to soften his words. “But now that I’ve failed, what d’ye want me for?”

“Jack’s looking for ye, we’re crackin’ open some good Spanish stuff, and he says he owes you.”

Jack couldn’t quite restrain a small grin in the dark.

*

The “Spanish stuff” was, indeed, good. The sweet fortified wines of Jerez were not to the taste of all the crew, but disappeared rapidly nonetheless, and the moon was not far over the horizon when they resorted to their usual rum. Only a skeleton watch remained on duty; seventy odd men, in varied states of intoxication and disarray, were doing their level best to demonstrate that there were some high points in the life of a pirate. Musicians, for want of a better term, had cleared a space in the waist and were creating a merry racket on hornpipe and fiddle; hanging lanterns threw long shadows across the deck, shadows which leapt and flailed as their owners danced with abandon, if not with skill or grace. The Captain walked among his men, cheering them on, passing on bottles as they came up from the hold.

Jack watched it all through a haze of sweet alcohol, from the edges of a group playing at dice. He had no money to wager, and so was of little interest to the other men involved. Their shouts and curses were vivid, sudden counterbalances to the wailing music.

Jack leant against the gunwales, his attention entirely taken up by two dim figures some way away, beyond the warm lanternlight. Tobias’ First and Second were cosy this evening. Sparrow leant against the forecastle, shadowed by the looming height of Barbossa. Their heads were not far apart, and seemed in deep conversation. This, in and of itself, should not have concerned any member of the company; but Jack could not watch it without twitching discomfort. He watched the angle of Sparrow’s hip. He watched the way Barbossa’s spatulate fingers clutched at his own thigh, as if thinking of another’s. He watched the questioning tilt of Sparrow’s head, and the flickers of metallic light thrown by his movement.

He had seen the raw hunger in the taller man’s face whenever he saw Jack Sparrow; he had seen the deliberate ambiguity of Sparrow’s expression in return. He knew the game that was being played, and might have considered it a dangerous one, were he not too overcome with jealousy to consider anything rationally.

At first, when they’d come aboard, he’d been quite sure that Sparrow’s “rule” was nothing more than a ruse, another nonsense conjured to pique his interest; but for days now, he’d been given no sign that this was the true interpretation. And the less he could have it, the more he wanted it, whatever “it” might be. And the more he saw someone else try to take it, the more he wanted to take it for himself.

A commotion in the waist drew his attention for a moment, and with a final defiant wail the pipe was silenced; he saw two great muscular neegers (there being a dozen or more in the company) rolling a drum across the deck; then one of them began to beat it, and cries went up the length of the ship, and Sparrow ducked away from Barbossa’s shadow and emerged into the light, smile flashing. More drums appeared, and a savage rhythm began, fast and syncopated; over the top of it came the fiddle, shrieking some unholy melody straight from the Dark Continent. Strange as it sounded to Jack, it nevertheless set up some answering rhythm in his bones; and clearly it was not strange at all to the men of the _Pearl_ , and some two dozen of them began to stamp and dance their way around the drummers. Jack grinned; it was like the Vagabond camps of the East, full of gypsies and fire and movement and song; and he was on the verge of joining them, when his eye was arrested once more by that familiar figure, and his heart lurched into his throat at the sight of Jack Sparrow, dancing with rum-soaked abandon.

The other pirates danced, as men dance. They stamped their feet, and clapped their hands, and jumped and hopped. Some of them even did so in some sort of relation to the music. But Jack Sparrow let those pounding drumbeats enter him, and do whatever they would with him, and he was theirs. His flying hair and hands, his twitching shoulders, his jutting hips and feral smile were all extensions of that wild and incult pulse; and he looked at no-one, a blind dervish, possessed by the music.

Jack stood foolish; staring; aching.

A warm body sidled up behind him, and a dark voice muttered, “Shut your mouth, Shaftoe, or get a rag and swab that puddle of spittle away.”

“Eh?” said Jack intelligently, turning to see the Captain at his shoulder.

“There ain’t no point to it,” murmured John Tobias in his ear. “D’you want to end up like _that_?” A jut of chin indicated a tall, still figure on the edge of the lanternlight. Jack looked across and saw Barbossa; the Second was watching the First with an intent, miserable hunger that transmuted to anger, then pain, under a layer of naked desire.

“Fuckin’ tragic, ain’t it,” said Tobias, and laughed. “Jack Sparrow’s got a wicked streak a mile deep. Don’t let him do it to you, boy. It’ll eat you up, and you’ll never get what you want.”

“Who says I want anything?”

“ _You_ do… you just don’t say it with your mouth,” whispered the Captain, and slipped away.

Jack Shaftoe sank further into the shadows, and watched that slight swaying shape; watched the other eyes upon it. Barbossa’s gaze flicked to his own. They stared at each other across the stamping crowd, and Barbossa’s look said, clear as day: _don’t you dare, boy_. Jack grinned at him. Wondered if Barbossa knew he’d already dared. He turned back to their shared obsession; he watched him and yearned; yearned to be him, to touch him, to have him. His head was filled with dark memories of warm curved flesh and flexing strength, of wet heat on his neck and hot hands upon his body. He’d had it once. He wanted it again. Oh, god, he wanted it again.

That voice echoed, rough-edged, in his head: _D’you want to fuck me, Jack?_

And God damn Jack Sparrow’s supposed rule; and God damn Tobias’ warning; and God damn Barbossa’s threat. Jack Shaftoe would do as he pleased. A hot twisting urge flushed through him, and he pushed his way into the throng, letting the manic rhythm shudder through his blood till it was the pendulum of his own heart also, abandoning his body to it, his hands over his head as he threaded his way towards Sparrow, his head full of the fire and flash of Vagabond camps and myriad nights spent in just this way.

Sparrow’s eyes did not flick open until Jack was right in front of him, until Jack’s thigh scraped against his own; when they did, his mouth opened wide, and Jack thought it was in laughter, but he could hear nothing over the slamming drums and the wailing strings and the pulsing surge of his blood in his ears; then Sparrow closed his eyes again, and turned his undulating back to Jack, giving Jack a moment and more to hotly watch the grind of those narrow hips before backing deliberately against him. Jack’s eyes rolled behind quickly closed lids as hard curving flesh met his, and he swelled impossibly, deliciously; the quivering shudder of the pounded deck travelled up through his feet, into his thighs, his hips, his spine, and they moved together, together, together, and-

He could not bear it for one more living minute. Not one. The drums were pounding into a faster and faster crescendo, the fiddle’s cries more desperate and piercing than ever, and he grabbed Sparrow by one flicking arm. Sparrow’s eyes flew open, as did his mouth, but he said nothing as Jack hauled him from the crowd, and the bodies closed behind them, too drunk and distracted to care.

“Jack-?” was all that Sparrow managed to say before he was pushed back against the mizzenmast, and a burning mouth descended upon his with determined ferocity and clear intent, with a hungry tongue and teeth that could not, apparently, always be held back from their urge to bite. Jack Shaftoe was close to exploding with it, there and then, and he pinned the slighter man against the mast with forceful hips, grinding against him, sucking in the delicious musky taste of him, clutching handfuls of hair and beads and bone. He did not know whether Barbossa could see what he was doing. Neither did he care.

But Sparrow’s head tilted away, and his mouth gave nothing back save a sharp bright smile; and with a twist that almost brought Jack to completion, and a wriggle that threatened the same, he escaped Jack’s pinion, and said, “Have you forgotten my rule, Jack?”

Jack stared at him in disbelief. He saw the flush on the pirate’s face, but could not say with certainty what it was that called it into being. He still had a grip on the other man’s arm, and could feel the tensing of that hard muscle.

“I’ve never cared much for rules,” said Jack Shaftoe, and hauled Jack Sparrow (resisting; and yet, not resisting quite enough) belowdecks.


	8. Chapter 8

  


The wriggling, protesting weight of Sparrow dragged behind him as Jack Shaftoe made his burning impatient way down the stairs, and along the narrow corridor to their shared cabin; upon the third protestation of his all-important rule, Sparrow found himself crushed against the panelled wall, his mouth firmly closed by another heated kiss. And this time, despite the fun of the game, it simply could not be ignored; his tongue, with a mind of its own (or possibly under the command of some other parts of his body) insinuated its way into Shaftoe’s dark sweet mouth, and was bitten and licked for its pains; and his hands wandered their way into the rough gold straw of Shaftoe’s hair, pulling him closer, inviting him in. And in Shaftoe came, pushing his way into Jack’s hungry mouth, his breath hot on Jack’s cheek, his solid body pressing Jack into the wall.

“See? There’s no such damn rule,” panted Shaftoe, pulling back from Jack’s lips.

“Yes there is,” lied Jack gleefully.

“Then it doesn’t apply to _me_ ,” said Shaftoe, and dragged Jack the last few yards to the low blackened doorway of their cabin, slamming the door shut behind them.

The darkness was utter, and Sparrow slipped from his grasp; Shaftoe heard the scrape of a flint, and a small gold light bloomed in the lantern hanging from the beam above the cot, revealing to him the flushed and feral visage of Jack Sparrow. There was a sheen of sweat across the skin at his throat, and across his sharp cheekbones, and he stared happy challenge at Jack.

“Well then, mate,” said Sparrow, “Let’s say, hypothetically, that you’re on the right track, and the rule has a certain degree of flexibility where you’re concerned. So what, in this hypothetical happenstance, would you be wanting to do about it?”

Jack’s heart was hammering and he was bold and dizzy with rum and lust and Sparrow’s hot proximity. “I want to fuck you,” he said, simply, and with a grin on his face that might in other circumstances have been mistaken for idiocy.

Sparrow’s smile, already wide, broadened perceptibly; but he put a hand on his hip, and the other to his plump bottom lip, and said, “Lots of people do, Jack. Why should I let you, eh? Would it not be more in my interests to let, say, Barbossa have his way?”

“But you don’t _want_ Barbossa,” said Jack, and pulled his shirt over his head. There was no reaction save a miniscule narrowing of Sparrow’s eyes… and did Jack see… yes, a finger stroking his lip, tiny tiny motions showing the truth of it all.

“What makes you think I want you?” said Sparrow, just as he had on the clifftop.

But this time, Jack knew the answer; and he took a step closer to the pirate, and ran a hand up under the thick warm hair, and murmured into his ear, “I don’t think it, Jack, I know it; I know it, because you told me nay, and you knew what that meant”; then took the gold-pierced earlobe between his teeth and ran his tongue around it, and was utterly gratified when Sparrow groaned, and hot hands came into quivering contact with his torso. Sparrow tilted his neck, presenting it to Jack’s mouth, and he could finally kiss it, lick it, suck it, as he yearned to, and it tasted of sea and bright sunlight and fearless strength. He did not know whether to laugh or groan with the beauty of it, and the sound that came forth was both and neither. He could not find it in him to care a jot that the body beneath his hands was that of a man, and a pirate; in fact, it brought him nothing but joy to think that it was both those things, and more. His hands trembled as he pushed them up into the warm air beneath Sparrow’s shirt, and he pulled the shirt off roughly, throwing it so forcefully that he scraped his knuckles on the rough beam overhead, and there it was again, that body which had been so captivating in moonlight and was even more so in warm bronze lanternlight.

Sparrow’s face was close to his, close and warm and astonishingly lovely, and Sparrow’s eyes roamed over Jack’s own face with a mirrored look of desire and admiration as his narrow fingers slid over Jack’s hipbones, over the soft skin of his lower belly, delving down and wrapping round. Jack closed his eyes and clenched the muscles of his stomach at the sensation, hissing through his teeth, and Sparrow’s strong pointed tongue slid over Jack’s upper lip, then his lower. With a hair's breadth between their mouths, and in an impossibly low and guttural mutter that came from deep in his wet throat, Sparrow (fingers clutched round Jack’s eager yard) said, “Well then, I confess it, you’re right; I want this in me, Jack, I want you to fuck me, and I want it deep, and hard, and every way”: which statement, had Jack only known it, came as a surprise to Sparrow even as it ventured from his lips, the pirate’s imagination having previously been entirely filled with the sweet pale vision of Jack Shaftoe’s lily-pale English backside presented up for his own delectation; but now, in the face of Shaftoe’s sudden determination, his hot certainty, it all seemed changed, and he ached for Shaftoe’s weight upon him.

Jack could not find any response in him to this statement beyond a groan and an irresistible urge to be naked against Jack Sparrow, an urge which he rapidly indulged, pushing at Sparrow’s trousers and wriggling out of his own till they could stand crushed together, almost more warm skin and muscle and jutting desire than he could bear now pressed against him. Sparrow pulled his face down for deep and searching kisses that tumbled through his head like blown roses, all the sweetness and warmth of summer in that sugary rum-soaked mouth. Oh, God, he wanted it, and his hips ground against Jack Sparrow’s body, his cock sliding dry against the other in a way so painful-bright that he almost found it in him to regret the moist charity of a woman’s body, that had never given him such a sharp-edged delight before. And this thought led him to think another, and he muttered to Sparrow, “You know I’ve not…?”

“Aye, and I know you will,” said Sparrow, low and hot, and went to lower himself to the cot; but Jack stopped him, feeling too full of the strange beauty of the unknown not to want to push himself further into its clutches; and Jack held Sparrow’s slender hips in his big rough hands and knelt before him. Sparrow twined his fingers into Jack’s hair, and tilted his face up, and said, “Jack, you don’t have to”; at which Jack scowled, and said, “I do as I please, no more and no less”; and proceeded to please himself, and incidentally Jack Sparrow, quite exceptionally much.

Sparrow’s low voice above him murmured and chuckled and moaned as Jack felt things under his hands and tongue and lips that he had never felt before on the body of another, and the newness was as intoxicating as the forbiddenness, and both of those together still not as intoxicating as the taste and smell of Jack Sparrow’s dark velvety skin, or the warm musky tickle of hair curling against Jack’s nose and cheek, and he could not quite believe what it was that he had in his mouth, but it seemed to fill him with scattered glowing heartbeats that shuddered through him in concert with the deep vibrations of drumming that still shook the ship from the deck above. Sparrow’s fingers clutched hard at his skull, and he heard the whisper like an incantation, _Jesus, Jack, there – there – there – oh god yes, your mouth, your mouth Jack, how I’ve wanted it and this is just how, just how oh god I knew it would be, there – there – there_. Jack cupped a hand between Sparrow’s legs, and felt the soft sac drawing up into the other man’s body, and hooked rough fingers behind those sliding globes of flesh, pulling them down, not letting him spend yet; with one finger he stroked back, behind, to the strange unknown that he wanted, where he wanted to be. A gasping laugh/cry reached his ears, and he looked up to Sparrow’s dark and candent eyes and was told he was a tease, a cruel tease, which pleased him after being taunted so for so many long days. He ran his teeth, gentle, careful, dangerous, over the perfectly swollen skin between his lips; it felt so stretched, so full, that he could imagine a tiny nick splitting into wet mouthlike rips, like the skin of overripe fruit; and he reached down to himself and knew he was the same.

 _Oh, Christ, now Jack, please now please_ came to his ears and he stood; his musky mouth was taken once more by the pirate’s and he was pulled down to the cot, and lay heavy on Sparrow’s lithe and writhing self, as Sparrow scrabbled a hand under his thin mattress and emerged with a red glass pot which glinted in the dim gold light and gave up its cork with a scent of vanilla and (had Jack only known of such a smell) coconut which seemed to him to be the possible smell of heaven, excepting that he had found the smell of heaven those long minutes before as he buried his face against Jack Sparrow’s neck. _Here_ , said Sparrow, and took Jack’s hand and slathered it with aromatic slipperiness; then pushed Jack back till he was kneeling between the pirate’s legs, those strong and elegant limbs which then claimed their place up on Jack’s shoulders. _Like this, like this_ , as clever fingers took Jack’s own and helped him to push inside; and Jack’s heart leapt and bled victorious and fearful as he felt the tight resistance and feared some hurt, till Sparrow’s face told him it was no hurt; and then, pushed up onto one elbow and close enough to Jack that he could see every flicker on that expressive face, every glitter in the pitchy eyes, Sparrow’s long narrow finger pushed alongside Jack’s own deep in that dark secret place, encouraged him to come further, more, and then guided and twisted Jack’s finger against some part inside that made Sparrow hiss and bite his lip and say _There Jack, remember there, oh Christ oh Christ_. And Jack resolved to remember it well because the look on Jack Sparrow’s face when he felt that pleasure was something that he wanted to see a thousand times more, and be responsible for, and be the only owner of.

But it is hard to resolve anything with any reliable certainty when the greased hand of the most ridiculously beautiful man you’ve ever seen is sliding forceful and certain down your blood-full cock, and that man is pulling you towards him with the ankles he’s clasped behind your back, and he’s pulling your finger out of himself to make room for something else, and he’s hissing at you _Come on Jack, please, fuck me, don’t make me wait another moment_ with such a look on his face that you need to make him wait another moment just to ensure that you can, in fact, carry out his request without releasing into him before you’re more than halfway.

Still, Jack tried; and once he had breached the wonderful sliding tightness of Jack Sparrow’s body, and finished gasping at the sublimely wonderful closeness clutched around him, he gathered himself and began to move, and knew he had remembered well when Sparrow arched and howled beneath him. Then Jack lost the tiny remnant of restraint that had been his, and with every quivering muscle of his legs and arse he pushed, slammed, thrust into the body of the man below him; whose thighs spread still wider, and whose heels dug into Jack’s ribs with vicious need. The drums above them did not falter and neither did Jack, though he was barely sensible and barely himself as he drove again and again into the yielding blackness of the pirate’s flesh, in synchronicity with the pounding rhythm above; and Sparrow, manic, teeth bared and nails sinking into Jack’s skin, chanted below him, a threnody of words hailing the little death that approached faster-faster-faster till Jack felt hot liquid plashing on his belly and that touch and the sudden Sparrow-silence that accompanied it were the last step in his journey; and arrival was an incandescent perfection that made him howl, banshee-like, even as the drums and fiddle fell quiet, so that Jack Shaftoe’s cry echoed up from the depths of the _Black Pearl_ as though he were her own soul’s voice.

He shuddered briefly, repeatedly, through the last delicious twitches, then fell bonelessly down on Sparrow’s panting, sweaty chest as those octopus legs released him with equal exhaustion.

“Jaysus,” said Jack, eloquently, into the creaking silence.

“Oh, Jack,” said Sparrow. “Oh, Jack.”

“What? Are you alright? Did I…?”

“Oh, you most certainly did,” and Jack looked over briefly concerned, but Sparrow’s gold smile was in broad evidence. “That’s what I like about you, Jack,” he continued, “once you’ve made up your mind, you’re all for it.”

“Took me a time to make up my mind on this one though,” noted Jack, who was, in retrospect, still faintly surprised that he’d done so at all.

“Ah, but you did, and then, coming over all _forceful_ like that… oh, Jack, how could a poor innocent little pirate resist?”

The concatenation of innocence and Jack Sparrow made Jack laugh. “I don’t believe the innocent are given to laying traps, Mr Sparrow, and that was a trap of the highest order.”

“Lobster,” said Sparrow, rather fondly. “Too obvious, Jack, you’re simply too obvious, the most contrary creature I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m not contrary,” said Jack (proving it); “I’ve just got a terrible itch for the unwise.”

“Excellent, for I’m possibly as unwise as can be imagined, and I like the thought that you’d have a terrible itch for me,” said Sparrow, grinning salaciously, and he rolled t’wards Jack, throwing a long warm arm and leg over him, and smeared Jack’s flank, uncaringly, with cool viscous liquid from his messy belly. Jack was faintly surprised by this; it hadn’t quite occurred to him that this whole… thing… might involve any sort of _affection_ , outside of the hot embraces that their bodies seemed to demand of one another. But now that he had it; now that Sparrow leant over him, and gently, warmly, kissed him on bruised lips, with the manner of a man who was doing so simply because he liked it and wanted to; now that he felt these things, he had to admit that he found them just as pleasurable as the burning depths of Jack Sparrow’s body had been.

He kissed Sparrow back, but then determined to sound him out, playing the ingenue, and asking, “Will we do this again, then, Jack?”

Sparrow’s eyes widened. “Well, give me five minutes, love, and I’m most appreciative of your enthusiasm –“

“No,” said Jack, and then, faced with a moue, “Well maybe, possibly, but I’m speaking of alternative occasions. Even, perhaps, ones on which I am not completely intoxicated.”

“I should hope so,” said, Sparrow, sounding slightly miffed. “Whyever not?”

“How does it work, then, on board?”

“Well, I wouldn’t recommend doing it on deck, not when we have a cabin to resort to, some of the boys can get a bit overexcited.”

Jack found he was recalling to some extent how frustrating he had found Sparrow, and his talent for sinuous non sequiturs, when he first met him. “Well, that’s an interesting point Jack, but I was referring rather to the other men of the company and their possible interpretation of the situation.”

“Oh, d’you mean, will they mind that we’re fucking?”

“Mm,” said Jack, manfully fighting down a blush.

“Well, Barbossa’s going to be a mite peeved, you might want to avoid him for a day or two after that shriek you let out.”

The blush was victorious. Jack pretended to himself, bootlessly, that it was too dark for Sparrow to note it, and carried on: “And the rest?”

“Oh, they won’t care, darlin’, though I suspect young Ragetti’s found you more diverting than he should do.”

Jack closed his eyes briefly in an attempt to wipe all recall of that comment from his memory, permanently.

“And I might,” said Sparrow, “try to line up our watches, which have been sadly asynchronous of late.”

“Not sure you’d want me on your watch,” confessed Jack, “I only know one knot, and I’ve a tendency to tie that one badly.”

“Then I’ll give you something easy to do,” said Sparrow, and began to trace lazy sweeping circles over Jack’s chest, sending tiny shivers through him, making him remember traced patterns in dust, in sand, in anything… Sparrow’s head always filled with curlicues and swirls that wanted to spill out through his cunning fingers. “P’rhaps we should just stick close together, till you get the hang of things. Some places on this ship, you can be _very_ close together, you know.”

“How close?” said Jack, throatily.

“Oh… sometimes, as much as _this_ close…” murmured Sparrow, and then his narrow whippety self was on top of Jack’s newly interested body; his fingers were finding strangely tender places in the oddest spots; his hair drifted over Jack’s shoulders in the most delicious tickle imaginable; his mouth, soft and still suffused with warm and passionate blood, was on Jack’s eyelids; and Jack, enveloped in him, drowning in him, could not imagine why he had ever asked what the rest of the company would think, because he could not conceive of any answer that would change the way he felt right at that fierce warm moment.

*

Jack Sparrow, First Mate of the _Black Pearl_ , lay on the edge of his cot, one leg braced against the floor to ensure that the rest of him didn’t end up down there. This was a distinct possibility, due to Jack’s (sincere) insistence on sharing his cot with the warm and delectable body of Jack Shaftoe, Latest and, to date, Least Useful Recruit of the _Black Pearl_. A body which was, at this point, the focus of all Jack’s happiness, both for its well-formed and newly accessible exterior, and for its intriguing contents.

And since it was such a source of joy, Jack had wished to say only reassuring things to it; when Shaftoe enquired as to the probable reactions of the company, Jack had not the heart to be entirely truthful, for fear of losing this delicious, and so recently acquired, source of entertainment and carnal satisfaction, all bundled up into one muscled package which slept now with an open mouth, issuing hot damp breath onto Jack’s neck. But now… now, Jack could not sleep, although the music and celebration had long subsided, as had the sounds of tired and cheerful (or tired and fractious, depending on the outcome of their evening) buccaneers bedding down for the night; and the sounds which remained – the slap of water against the hull, Pearl’s creaking timbers and canvas, the soft padding steps of the watch above him – were those which he considered, in the normal run of things, to be the perfect lullaby.

 _Barbossa’s going to be a mite peeved_ , he thought to himself. Oh, Jack, and you with a reputation for exaggeration; ain’t that quite the reverse?

It had been such a perfect little web of insinuations, inferences, implications, and even the occasional out and out lie; it had so cleverly counter-weighted the hopes of Barbossa, the regrets of Tobias, all upon the sweetly balanced pivot of Jack’s slender self. Barbossa, yearning for Jack, was told he could never have him since Jack’s heart belonged to the Captain, who in turn would never let himself indulge Jack’s love on account of his position; Tobias, having once tried to take advantage of young Jack (never realising that the object of his affection was far from the innocent he made himself out to be) and made, so subtly, to feel a monster for it, though Jack was so forgiving, so loving; believing, now, that Jack would give himself to no man – was too cunning and clever to waste such a weapon as nature had bestowed on him – and admiring him for it.

All now thrown to the winds, all unbalanced, by Jack Shaftoe’s demands, thought Jack – for a moment, before his sense of fair play, which had been sorely tested in his short life, came briefly to the fore and reminded him that he had in fact done everything in his power to tempt Shaftoe into his bed.

Why? thought Jack, though he knew the simplest answer, being that, from the first moment of laying eyes on him, he’d wanted Shaftoe in the worst way; and in every moment since, he had not been able to see those big hands with their grubby nails and strong tapering fingers without imagining them upon some portion of his body, had not been able to hear that drawling London speech without wanting it to hiss demands of debauchery in his ear, had not been able to see those long strong legs do anything, even the simple innocent act of walking, without feeling their invisible ghosts wrapping round his waist, crushing him close. And every word Shaftoe spoke, every move he made, drove him deeper into Jack’s heart; till tonight, when with one simple sentence - _Then the rule doesn’t apply to me_ \- Shaftoe had sealed his place as something special and unique, coming to Jack with no argument, no game, no quest for power or solace, nothing but honest need.

And was there one thing, even one, that Shaftoe had done in their acquaintance that did not make him the perfect companion? Did he not have Jack’s own loquacious curiosity, and could he not be driven to the most reckless and chancy acts with the right words? Was he not brave, possibly foolhardy, and independent, and yet loyal? And still, he was different from Jack in ways that made him such a perfect foil; so straightforward that any man would trust him, while still being quick enough on any uptake; seeming so simple, and yet Jack was learning that he was far, far from it. Between the two of them…

Jack could imagine them achieving anything. Anything. And it filled him with joy, and it frightened him to death.

*

Warm and wispy dreams of flying were in Jack Shaftoe’s head, but were pushed aside by the stretch of his waking mind, and disappeared into the lost place where dreams, unneeded, go, till he was no longer hovering high above glittering blue sea, but was rolling unchecked in what he now, with rapid certainty, recalled to be Jack Sparrow’s cot, and he was unchecked because he was alone in it. And he was in it because…

Oh. Yes.

Jack couldn’t stop a grin. It simply wasn’t worth fretting over, now. It was done, and done well, and that was that.

Oh, Lord it was done well.

He stretched out cramped and aching muscles, put his hands behind his head, and had just closed his eyes in preparation for a little leisurely recall when he heard a noise at the door. His heart jumped and the grin widened. Sparrow was back. He threw himself into a careless pose of feigned sleep, and waited to be woken.

Footsteps, quiet. Jack’s heart quickened but he forced his breath to be slow, deep, calm.

“Wakey, wakey,” came a voice; but it was not the warm gravel of Sparrow’s tones. And it was not the light touch of a teasing finger at Jack’s throat, but the cold sharpness of a blade. His eyes flew open and met those of the Second Mate, bright with loathing.

Jack did not move a muscle. Peeved, indeed, a mite.


	9. Chapter 9

  


Jack’s breath seemed terribly loud in the tiny space, as did the pounding of his heart, though he was confident that this last, at least, was not audible to his interlocutor. Surely it was drowned out by the howl of the wind in the stays, and the groaning creaks that the ship was giving out as she pitched nastily. The wind had certainly come up in the night; maybe that was why Sparrow had disappeared.

“I’m awake, then,” said Jack with a degree of calm by which he couldn’t help but be impressed, deeming it considerably greater than that which could be reasonably expected of any man who was lying naked under the blade of a jilted pirate, on a rolling pirate vessel, in the middle of what appeared to be a storm at sea; “What of it?”

There was a twitch under Barbossa’s left eye which jumped alarmingly at Jack’s voice. “What of it, he says,” he hissed, and flecks of angry spittle spattered against Jack’s face (he forbore to wipe them away). “What of it, as he lies here bare as a babe in another man’s sheets.”

“We’re at sea, ain’t we? I’ve been led to believe it’s more or less the Done Thing out here,” said Jack, beginning to feel slightly cocky since he had not yet had his throat cut, which delay seemed to bode well for the Second’s intentions. Still, he was impressed with Barbossa’s talent for threatening, which involved much eye rolling and gurning and a particularly discombobulating tone of voice. Jack felt he could learn a thing or two here.

“’T’ain’t the done thing when it’s been made crystal clear that it ain’t,” continued the pirate, “and I b’lieve that was made obvious to you last night; in fact, oh yes! I b’lieve it was me as made it so.”

“What you made clear,” said Jack, reasonably certain now that, despite appearances, he was not going to be warned off in too fatal a manner, “is that you’d like to be in just my position now, and I must say that speaking as the man who _is_ in this position, I’ve a fair degree of sympathy for your desires; but it seems to me to’ve been a fair fight, as it were, and I’ve bested you, and that’s tha- _attt_!” This last word ended in a distorted yelp as a hard bony knee leant into his belly with the full weight of its owner behind it, and simultaneously, a glittery silver blossom of pain appeared under his jaw as Barbossa flicked his knife against the bone, leaving its point embedded in Jack’s flesh, pushing hard enough that Jack craned away from its nasty insistent pressure.

“Well, you enjoy your _victory_ , Mr Shaftoe,” said Barbossa. “But keep in mind that this is a pirate vessel, a fighting ship; and as you may have heard, lad, terrible things can happen at sea. Terrible things. I’d tell you more, but I’m a busy man.” And with a final graunching grind of his knee into Jack’s gut, he sheathed his knife and was gone as quickly as he’d come.

Jack let out a long breath. He couldn’t find it in him to be too disturbed by the threat; he’d led a life to date that almost presupposed that the majority of people he met on any given day were reasonably likely to wish him ill. Nevertheless, Barbossa’d certainly taken the gleaming edge off his awakening. Bastard. He felt a tickling trickle of blood running up his jawline, down toward the pillow, and wiped it away, absently licking it from his fingers. But beneath him, the cot tossed in a way that wasn’t unpleasant, and he rolled with its motion, rapidly regaining his equilibrium. Now, where was he before he’d been so rudely interrupted?

Ah yes, there, beneath a swirl of russetty kisses that had scattered and sucked their way over his shoulder and down to the pale skin beneath his armpit, which’d turned out, oddly enough, to be a place where all his nerves seemed to’ve gathered and were lying in wait for the advent of said kisses… and when they’d arrived, oh, it was with a burst of shivery deliciousness that made Jack writhe and laugh out loud; and then they redirected their intentions, on and down and…

“All hands!” came the bellowing cry, and was echoed down belowdecks. “All hands!”

Oh, a pox upon the inconvenience of piracy! Jack leapt up, pulled on his shirt and breeches, and joined the crush of bodies fighting their way topside.

*

On deck, under a sky that darkened every minute, disorder reigned. Jack stared round, buffeted by wind and running men, trying to establish what the hell he was supposed to be doing; the Captain stood on the quarterdeck, Sparrow at his side, hollering some mysterious zargon which, even if it had been the King’s English, would still have done Jack no good, since the wind whipped it away and fed it to the waves before it reached his pinking ears. Jack had thought he had established some reasonably effectual sea legs, but today he was back to stumbling like a newborn lamb as the deck heaved and dropped below him. He started staggering towards the quarterdeck, but turned when he felt a grasping hand, and there was Bill Turner, eyes dark with fatigue, hair loose about his face where the wind had pulled it from its queue. “With me!” he shouted, and hauled Jack forward to the mainmast, where the men of their watch were gathered, some already making their way up the ratlines. “Up!” shouted Turner, gesticulating. “Reefing it all!”

Jack took his place in the line and they began to climb; which he’d done several times in the past few days, and even begun to enjoy, but it surely hadn’t been quite like this, with the building shriek of the wind being joined by fat heavy raindrops that began to beat a loud tattoo on the canvas before him, and the sway of the mast increasing with every upward yard. Next to him, Turner on one side and Red James on the other were pulling ahead, and Jack couldn’t let that happen; he reached up quickly, having something to prove to Jack Sparrow and that damned Barbossa down below, and soon pulled even.

When they reached the mainsailyard he caught a glimpse, fore and aft, of men scaling the other masts’ rigging also; and thought to stop, but no, up they went, attending first to the maintopsail, the maintopgallant having already been reefed; Turner howled his orders into the wind, and the line of men struggled with the taut cordage and then, worse, the huge wet weight of canvas which writhed and fought in their grasp till Jack could not believe their puny human arms could ever wrestle it to submission. Yet they did, and as they finally bound and secured it he stood for a moment on the yardarm and faced into the pitching wind which howled and plowed its way through and round him, plucking and pulling at his clothes and sending his shirt-tails flickering around him like so many cotton flames; it was hard to even breathe, let alone speak, and it filled Jack with the glorious vitality that one feels when it seems that all vitality may be taken at any moment; he felt more fully alive than he had in several months, barring recent episodes with the impossible Jack Sparrow – but were they not themselves contributing to his sense of utter well-being? He could not dispute it. He grinned wide at Turner whose generous smile beamed back at him; then Turner roared “Down, lads!” and they descended and began the struggle over, this time with more canvas, more rain, and less strength in their arms.

_Dear Bob, haven’t time for much detail or will become distracted and probably fall to my death; but you may like to know that I seem to be on the slippery and precipitous edge of a momentous decision. I suspect I may turn pirate for quite some time, brother mine, and for numerous and diverse reasons I’m enormously happy about it._

Jack’s muscles yowled with the strain of it, the weight of it, as the canvas fought them, flapping and cracking and leaving whiplike welts where it could. But he would best it; and he held his own, and was a sailor amongst sailors, and would not disappoint Jack Sparrow for all the wide blue world.

*

Jack Sparrow stood beside his Captain at the helm and relayed his orders, watching the grey roiling cloud moving ever closer, and ever lower. It had been such a fine wind, they’d been making such great headway, but he’d been woken by a quiver in the _Pearl_ ’s timbers that he knew in his bones, one that said she’d had enough, and there was worse to come; and had slipped topside, leaving Shaftoe (who was somehow, in his sleep, contriving to smell like warm new-baked bread) mumbling dreamily in his cot. Now as _All hands_ was called, he saw Shaftoe appear with a faint daze about him, and thought for a moment that he saw blood on his neck – had he done that? – before Bootstrap took his charge in hand and towed him aloft. Surreptitious, Jack squinted after that lanky tow-headed form; and yes, it held its own in the ratlines, and he tried not to smile.

“What, my friend, are you looking so damnably happy about?” muttered Tobias, at his shoulder, his moustache tickling Jack’s ear. “Don’t tell me you’ve missed the foul weather as well as fair?”

“Missed it all, every moment,” said Jack, with a grin; and then, as he watched the small figure far above him, and the rain began to fall, “Shall I go up, Captain, help ‘em out?”

“I’m sure Mr Shaftoe will be fine without you,” came the reply, and Jack looked up, a mask quick on his face, unsure as to what his Captain’s feelings were on the matter. But the handsome face, half-hid behind wet black curls, showed no upset. They looked at one another for a long moment, till Jack said, “You’ve no quarrel with it, Captain?” and they both knew what he meant.

“None on my part. You’re a free man, Jack. But…”

Jack followed Tobias’ gaze and saw Barbossa approaching behind him, a picture of wet irritation.

“Have a care with him; it’s the wounded bull that’ll charge, my friend,” said the Captain under his breath, and then, “Mr Barbossa! Pray take the wheel; Mr Sparrow, take some men and rig a stay for water collection if you’d be so kind, though there’s every chance it’ll get tainted in these seas.”

“Aye, Captain. She’s all yours, mate,” Jack said genially, clapping Barbossa on the shoulder as he gave him the helm; but received nothing for his pains save a glare. Which was itself sufficient to tell him that Jack Shaftoe’s determined attempts at seduction ‘gainst the mizzen had not gone unnoticed.

One out of two in a tizzy; could be worse, Jack told himself, and at least Tobias had taken it well. He wandered forward, the fierce blustery wind whipping his hair round his face and occasionally a strand of beads, which frankly stung, so Jack loosed a leather thong from his wrist and tied it tight round his unruly locks. He collared Twigg and Parsons, and set them to work creating a canvas runnel, sheltered in the waist with its back turned to the wind and spume, for rainwater; but he considered it pointless make-busy, and decided that Tobias had merely wanted to dispose of him while his Second cooled to a simmer.

Which wasn’t an entirely foolish plan. But it riled him. To be sure, he’d played Barbossa along, but surely the man knew that for a game? Surely it’d been clear that his desires were simply unreciprocated, underneath the kindly layers of _oh, but the Captain_ and _my heart just ain’t my own to give, Hector my friend_? Didn’t any grown man know in his heart of hearts that if the answer had been yes, it would have simply been yes, and nothing else would’ve mattered?

Jack’s natural tendency to tolerance was overcoming his irritation though, not to mention the increasingly wild weather which was taking most thought from him, washing it away in dousing spray and cool stinging rain; and perhaps it would have won out, left to its own devices. But it did not; for Jack lurked about the mainmast, making busy and hollering occasionally to prove his useful employment, till Shaftoe and his cohorts came sliding, whooping, down the stays; and one of the first things he saw (after the width of Shaftoe’s smile, and the way his wet and spiky hair flailed in the wind, and the delectable manner in which his wet clothes clung to – oh god, yes, after all that) was the line of blood half-masked by the fine blond beard; and Jack knew enough about inflicted wounds, whether in the course of over-ebullient fucking or deliberate redwork, to tell the difference. This was, quite clearly, the latter.

“Jack!” cried Shaftoe, vivid with joy. “It’s wild up there, mate, ain’t it?” He was obviously none the worse for a minor cut, but suddenly, that wasn’t at all the point. Jack could bear most things, but not things that threatened to curtail him, not things that tried to set boundaries or limits or restrictions upon him. He felt a rage building despite himself.

“Who did this t’you?” he demanded, tilting Shaftoe’s chin; the other man’s lips curled, and then he laughed.

“It’s a nonsense, Jack, leave it be,” said Shaftoe, and turned to where Bill was disappearing down a hatch; “I’ve to go now, I’ll find you later.” He made to leave, but was stopped short by a harsh grip on his arm.

“Barbossa?”

Shaftoe just looked at him, not interested in naming names, but it was clear enough to Jack that the Second had been up to no good; and equally clear that Shaftoe cared nothing for it, which pleased him inordinately, but still!

“It shan’t happen again,” said Jack fiercely.

“He can try,” said Shaftoe, careless; “I have to go, Jack, I’ve work to do.” Still, Jack noted, he made no move to pull away. And in that moment of stillness, amid so much motion and commotion of wind and wave and rope and wood, of calling and running, Jack Sparrow and Jack Shaftoe were completely alone again, the two of them deep in one another though connected only through a cold hand on a wet arm.

Jack took a deep breath, then let go. “Go,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yes,” said Shaftoe vaguely, with a gauzy look in his eyes, and he blinked, scattering fat silver drops from his eyelashes. Which seemed to clear him, and he grinned quick and bright and turned away, following Turner belowdecks.

*

It was a storm, but not the sort that sailors fear and immortalise; not the sort with mountainous waves that’ll turn a ship turtle, and send her poor inhabitants down to the depths; not the sort with terrible wild lightning that’ll strike a mast and cause a fire despite the soaked wood and the rain. Just the sort that needs patience, and a strong stomach, and must be ridden out.

Still, John Tobias was cautious, and kept a strong contingent about. Once they’d stowed and reefed and made certain that everything of use and value (and a fair bit that was neither) was lashed and secure, there was little to do; but there was no telling whether that would, of a sudden, cease to be the case. The forecastle was tight with men, a steamy fug of wet bodies arguing over cards, telling variously outrageous tales, and passing leather jacks of rum.

Jack Shaftoe was pressed up against a wall, endeavouring to recall the rules of a new game which the James boys were trying to teach him, but finding himself confused by the odd Spanish cards they used, which came in Coins, Cups, Swords and Clubs and distracted him mightily; and was further distracted when the door was hauled open against the wind, the nearer men complaining and shouting as they were drenched all over again, and there stood soaked Jack Sparrow silhouetted ‘neath the lintel, grin illuminating all before him.

“Lads!” he cried, and let the wind slam the door behind him so hard that the forecastle shook. “How’re we holding up in here?”

A ragged chorus of _ayes_ and the odd nauseated groan.

“Oh good,” said Sparrow, and picked his way over the bodies to Jack’s side, sitting down beside him. There was a ripple of amusement. Sparrow tilted his head as he heard it; clearly, certain sights and sounds last night had not gone unremarked. He looked over at Jack, and grinned.

“Jack, my friend,” he said loudly, “seems we’re providing a modicum of amusement to the boys, don’t you think?”

Jack had no idea whether the hot flush coursing through him was from embarrassment, or from Jack Sparrow’s proximity. Certainly, the latter was having an effect. Through two layers of damp cloth, still he could feel the creeping warmth of Sparrow’s knee where it touched his thigh. His head was full of swirling remembrances and a terrible itch to re-enact them all. But his chin still stung where Barbossa’s blade had left its reminder.

There was a curious lull in the noise as all those pairs of eyes were turned upon him.

What to do?

Jack Shaftoe had only one methodology for solving life’s dilemmas. He was not a believer in over-analysis. Jack solved everything by listening to the impish little voice beside him, the curious certainty that it brought him having carried him through worse than this before, and doubtless worse to come. And the voice said:

_He’s yourn, Jack-my-Jack, and you his, and you’re a liar an’ you let anyone think elsewise._

Jack reminded the voice that he was quite often a liar and that it bothered him remarkably little.

_Heehee, I know it! But this my darlin’ this would bother an’ bother you ‘cause this my darlin’ Matters, don’t it?_

Jack looked up to Sparrow’s face, still glistening damply, all its lovely bones and angles more than usually visible with his hair tied back; strangely exposed. Oh, that voice, it knew him in and out and through and through. It did, indeed, Matter.

“Seems to me,” said Jack, finally finding his voice, “that fellows as fine as this, having worked so hard, should deserve more than a _modicum_ of amusement, eh?”; and the Imp, sensing his intent, began to chortle and squeak, high and happy, as Jack put a hand behind the First Mate’s wet head and kissed him, well and proper, on his chilled lips.

He could barely hear the whoops and hollers and shouts of laughter that accompanied this, for his ears were full of the rasping surge of his own breath and blood, his mind overtaken by the delectable rush of contact, here, in front of all; and he would have done more, would have kissed Jack Sparrow hard and deep with tongue and teeth, but Sparrow laughed away from him and stood, bowing with great ceremony, and cried into the cheers, “So I’m pleased to amuse you, gentlemen, but I think that’ll suffice; pirates we may be, but savages I hope not. I do believe I’ll request Mr Shaftoe to accompany me elsewhere to continue this… conversation.” (Fresh bursts of laughter.)

Sparrow held down a hand to Jack, and Jack took it, hauling himself to his feet, and followed him out of the forecastle. Cheeks burning, blood humming, heart singing; the slapping hands on his calves as he passed (and occasionally higher than that, on his arse, which made him grin as he thought, _oh no boys, wrong way round_ and shivered at the burst of ridiculous pride that this thought gave him) telling him that Barbossa was in a minority here, and things did not need to be hid.

*

He had grabbed and kissed and pressed up against Jack Shaftoe as soon as they emerged into the howling rain, unable to wait one moment though Shaftoe was a tumbling weight against him on this tossing deck, uncaring that the water ran in busy rivulets down inside their clothing and drenched them head to toe. Jack Sparrow loved storms, loved the power of the wind and sea and being at their mercy, and loved the power of this solid ship to carry him through them; it filled him and charged him and amplified the urges of his body till he was driven powerless before them, nothing but a fractal reflection of the _Pearl_ ’s storm-tossed journey. He could barely kiss Shaftoe properly for the strength of his urge to smile, to laugh, to howl; but when Shaftoe’s arm came round behind him and he felt the broad stretch of fingers over his arse, pulling him closer, the levity was subsumed by the lust and he opened his jaw wide, sucking, licking over and over at a sweet rough chip on one incisor that marked this mouth as Jack Shaftoe’s alone, scraping his teeth over Shaftoe’s wet lip. Shaftoe was hard against him and oh god the thought of it, and the thought of that mouth on his own yard last night, oh, it was spiralling him down quicker than he thought possible. He was overtaken with the memory of Jack Shaftoe fierce and fearless, opening his mouth for the first time to another man’s cock, and the flash in his blue eyes as he did it, the shadow of the muscles along the side of his jaw…

“Come,” said Jack in a gasping growl; and with one last glance around the deck, to see that all was under as much control as could be expected, he led Shaftoe below, and they stumbled dripping and hasty to their cabin. Shaftoe slammed and locked the door behind them as Jack began to wriggle out of his wretchedly wet clothes, that clung and grabbed and had to be wrestled off him; he was halfway out of his shirt, blinded by its clammy grip on his head when big warm hands came to his aid, Shaftoe muttering “Let me,” as he divested Jack of it and dropped it to the floor, where it made a heavy wet sound that made them both grin.

“Feels better,” said Jack, though it felt cold, and he was tickled by the runnels of water that dribbled down his spine from his caught-back hair.

“Looks better,” said Shaftoe, and ran a slow finger along Jack’s collarbone. Cold skin on cold skin. Jack’s heart sung to think that Jack Shaftoe would now admit to such a thing; would now take him and kiss him in the sight of all; had thrown away all his misgivings and misconceptions and opened his heart and mind to all that could be between them. So suddenly, so completely. He peeled Shaftoe’s shirt up and over and off and ahh, there it was, that body so tanned and wiry, so strong and so utterly lickable, and when he did it tasted of clean clear rainwater first and warm Jack Shaftoe second. He loosed Shaftoe’s trousers, though they were too wet to fall away, and he had to kneel and peel them down, giving a long lick while he was there which made Shaftoe gasp; then they were off, and the bright cool skin of all this man was before him and Jack wrapped his arms around Shaftoe’s thighs and buried his face between them, breathing, feeling the rapid pulse of a vein beneath his cheek. Oh, he wanted to taste him again! And Oh, these wet trousers were vile! He scrambled out of them, standing again, and let Shaftoe grind against him, kissing him slowly, savouring, savouring, and the warmth of their bodies was slowly overcoming the wetness of their skin, though Jack’s fingertips were still wrinkled and pale.

“Jack,” he said, “D’you recall the clifftop?”

“Oh, yes,” said Shaftoe thickly, and his tongue found Jack’s ear and made him shiver.

“You came in my mouth,” murmured Jack, “and I could barely stop from spending too, from the taste of you.”

Shaftoe made a strangled sound, and clutched harder.

“And I loved it when you fucked me,” continued Jack, “but by Christ I want to taste you again, and I want your mouth on me just as you did last night, ‘cause your mouth is… your mouth is…” and he trailed off, not finding the words, and hooked a finger into Shaftoe’s mouth, terrifically hot against his still cool hand, feeling the visceral wetness inside his cheeks, the muscular rasp of his tongue; pulled him round and fastened his mouth there too, his tongue and teeth and finger all in concert as though he would climb inside warm Jack Shaftoe.

Shaftoe trembled beneath his hands and kissed him back with a delicious admixture of possession and submission that made Jack think of other men and other kisses and how they had not been this way; how they had wanted to take him and control him and show him that he was theirs and had succumbed to them. But not this kiss. Jack Shaftoe who would be beholden to no man wanted no man to be beholden to him, neither; wanted to come to him clear and equal and give and take in the same measure. Jack Shaftoe was his match and his equivalent. Jack Shaftoe was… oh, yes, Jack Shaftoe was taking his cock in hand and ohhh grasping hard and talking fast and what was he saying, oh _listen_ Jack:

“I want that too, Jack, I want to fuck your pretty mouth, god, d’you know how pretty it is? And when I saw it on my cock, Jesus! What you can do with that mouth! And you must teach me, I want to learn to do the same, ‘cause I liked it Jack, I liked you in my mouth too and I don’t care what that makes me…”

Oh, how Jack loved it when a gorgeous man said filthy things to him, particularly when naked and handling Jack’s extremities with such enthusiasm. Life didn’t get much better than this.

And yet, life then proceeded to disprove him, as delicious Jack Shaftoe with his bubbling laugh and clutching hands and heaving breath allowed himself to be organised and manoeuvred in such a manner that they both could take their avowed pleasures simultaneously; and soon Jack was deep in a whirlpool of physical gratification, Shaftoe's mouth open generous and wide and Jack trying not to force himself in beyond welcome but oh lord barely able to restrain, and trying still to keep his mind on bringing the same measure of Joy to Shaftoe (concentration on which task was not without reward, since most every action Jack took was moments later mirrored upon his own grateful person).

Shaftoe hummed, and arched, and twitched, and Jack, confident in his supreme flexibility, hooked a leg over the wide shoulder and gave himself purchase because he could not stop it now, could not hold back, could not deny his body’s call to push and strain and _fuck_ if his life depended on it. He groaned as he clutched Shaftoe to him, one arm hooked between Shaftoe’s blonde thighs, the other stretching, roaming, wherever it would go, till it was caught and held by Shaftoe’s own hand and their fingers twined and pressed; against the tender skin of his other arm he felt a body readying for release, and clenched his stomach, letting his do the same, opening his throat, squeezing Shaftoe’s hand, trying to tell him that oh god it was coming coming coming and then it was upon him, flowering red and bronze from his gut and out and out and out in shivering flames as Shaftoe froze and pushed and Jack’s throat was filled with warm ammoniac milkiness.

Jack swallowed, and sucked, and swallowed, and trembled, and sighed. Slowly, slowly, the world expanded and returned, beyond the borders of the body against him, beyond the tangled sheets of the cot. He disengaged himself and scrambled up the bed to join Jack Shaftoe on the pillow. Shaftoe’s eyes were still closed, his face flushed, his mouth half open and glistening.

Gently, Jack kissed him, licking at the taste of himself. Oh, Jack Shaftoe, he thought. Oh, Jack Shaftoe. He did not know what he meant by it, but it was something. Something fierce and new.

“The mouth on you,” muttered Shaftoe, running a hand down Jack’s body. Jack grinned at it and was pleased; and yet…

Shaftoe wasn’t the first man to think so. But he was the first man that Jack wanted to think more.


	10. Chapter 10

  


The wind abated by early evening, and the men of the dogwatch were sent up to drop canvas; the first of them were no sooner aloft than the cry came, “Sail ho!” Curious Jack Sparrow, gilded by the last cloud-dodging fingers of the setting sun, scurried up the ratlines quick as a monkey, glass tucked securely into his sash. Up on the crow’s nest he raised it to his eye, and yes, there was indeed a vessel, low on the horizon, and what’s more, if he was not mistaken (and he seldom was)…

Jack curled an arm round the topmast, leant down and bellowed, “Deck!” Far below, faces turned up to him. “Send Shaftoe up!” shouted Jack through cupped palms. He heard snatches of laughter borne up by the wind, but paid them no mind; it was, contrary to apparent public opinion, a legitimate request. Five minutes later, Shaftoe appeared and clambered onto the platform, his face quizzical and not a little suspicious. Jack quashed the brief flutter in his stomach that accompanied the sight of that red mouth, and handed him the glass, pointing nor’west. “Does that remind you of anything?” he asked.

Shaftoe squinted against the brass, frowned, bit his lip. “Well,” he said slowly, “I must say, though she’s a way off, she looks a lot like the last ship I saw before this one.”

“I was thinkin’ remarkably similar thoughts,” said Jack. “I do believe that might be our old friend, the _Aurora_.”

*

An hour later night had fallen, and the lookout kept watch on the other ship’s faint bobbing lights. In the Great Cabin, seated at table with Tobias and Barbossa, Sparrow and Shaftoe were presenting a proposal. That is, Jack Sparrow was presenting it; Shaftoe, who had led a life in which freely available comestibles were an irregular luxury, was largely preoccupied with his meal.

“How certain are you,” asked Tobias, “that it’s the same supply ship?”

“Reasonable sure… she’s a fat old wallower, aren’t many like her in the Navy; I’d lay she was Spanish once. But we’ll make sure it’s her ‘fore we take any action, anyway,” said Sparrow.

“What action? We ain’t going to get a damn thing from her, excepting a fight,” said Barbossa. He was not a happy man. Begin the day with a little light threatening, making your opinions perfectly clear on a matter; end it with the self-same threatenee across the table from you, where he’d no right to be, and the entire crew knowing that he’d entirely ignored your request. And be forced, what’s more, to watch Jack Sparrow looking at that man with a face full of admiration and desire. It was almost more than could be borne; he bore it only because his Captain made it clear that he must.

“Well, not so; she’s a Navy ship, she’s bound to have shot, case, langrage, powder, grog-”

“Filthy cat’s piss, only fit for the king’s lickspittles,” muttered Barbossa, but Sparrow went on:

“But that ain’t really the point, John, the point is that we can take a Navy ship, and sail in clear and easy to Turk’s Island and free every man jack of ‘em. There ain’t more than, what, Jack, twenty? stationed there. And wouldn’t that be a fine way to bite your thumb at the King’s boys?”

This gained Shaftoe’s attention, and he nodded, swallowing, and waved his fork about to illustrate his point as he said, “Aye, Captain, show them they can’t take the _Pearl_ ’s men and expect no retribution for it.”

“Oh so, an’ you give a damn for the _Pearl_ ’s reputation, do you?” scoffed Barbossa. “You’re after your scabrous little friends, Shaftoe, and don’t pretend elsewise.”

Shaftoe just grinned at him, finding a measure of enjoyment in the Second Mate’s sheer argumentativeness this evening. “I can’t dispute it,” he said happily. “Nothing would bring me greater pleasure than to free my scabrous little friends. That’s most certainly what’s in it for me. However, I’d say there’s also a measure of something in it for you lot, don’t you think?”

“Aye,” said Sparrow, before Barbossa could speak again. “Think of it, Captain! We’d be in possession of a naval vessel, we’d gain all her stores, we could strip that island bare, and leave all the King’s men where they left us. And the beauty of it is, no-one would be any the wiser for weeks. What a story it’d make!”

At this last, Tobias’ eyes finally crinkled at the corners. Jack Sparrow knew his Captain so well.

“You’ve a point there, Jack,” he said quietly; and then, “Hector, keep us on her tail tonight, but not too close. We’ll take her in the morning.”

“Captain,” said Barbossa through gritted teeth, with a curt nod. Shaftoe and Sparrow grinned fit to light a fire.

“C’mon, Jack,” said Sparrow, pushing back from the table. “You’ll need a sword.”

*

In the stony pre-dawn light, Jack Shaftoe stood at the gunwales, chest heavy with anticipation. At his side hung a sword, chosen from the _Pearl_ ’s arms chest; he had not borne one for months, but it felt good to be armed again. He’d sharpened it long and lovingly, refusing Sparrow’s hints and nudges to “come and get some rest” with a knowing grin; he liked the fact that Sparrow was impatient for him, liked the fact that he could say no, liked the frustration he glimpsed on the other man’s face. Liked everything he glimpsed on the other man’s face. Its constant stream of flickering emotions, habitually masked for others, was open now to Jack. It felt like a privilege, a gift.

It was definitely the _Aurora_ , and they’d crept up on her in the moonless night, no lights on their deck, deadlights tamped shut where light might show. By the time grey light began to filter through the clouds, and poor _Aurora_ began to pile on hopeful sail, it was far too late; she was too small, too sluggish, too heavy to make any chase of it.

“Takin’ sweetmeats from babies,” muttered someone behind him; but Jack suspected otherwise. Outmanned and outgunned they might be, but they were still the British Navy, and would not surrender without a fight. Their gunports were open, guns run out; small figures scurried busily about the deck.

“No more’n four pounders,” came the voice behind him again, and Jack turned to see Pug Malone, squinting into the rising sun. “Four pounders and carronades. We could sink her ‘fore she could touch us. Can’t be carrying a fuckin’ thing of use, why’re we bothering?”

“We don’t want to sink her,” said Jack, “we want to take her, and use her. Rescue mission, mate.” Mate? God, he was starting to talk like Sparrow.

Turner came up, and called his watch around him. The plan, he explained in short clipped sentences, his mouth a tight line that made Jack think that perhaps Turner wasn’t entirely happy with this, was to come up fast and close, board with as many as possible, and take the ship with as little damage as could be managed. The underlying message of this being that damage, though essentially unavoidable, should be targeted to flesh and bone rather than wood and canvas.

Jack stood back, watching the pirates ready for battle, and there was an eerie silence beneath it all; the wind was light, the morning still, and little being said. A pale and quiet calm before a storm.

Jack was entirely accustomed to the idea of being on the wrong side of the law; but still, this was his first experience of out-and-out piracy, and in more recent years he’d tended to be hanging about _behind_ the trained military men, rather than facing them head on as they attempted to do away with him. He knew that more than one pair of eyes would be upon him, and if he was going to establish any sort of reputation as a useful fighter, now was the day to do it. So he tried to put Jack Sparrow, if not out of his mind, at least to one side where he would not impede Jack’s vision too much. It was hard not to fret, just a little; it was like going into battle alongside a girl who had your heart. And yet, not! since Jack had a sneaking suspicion that Sparrow could more than hold his own, and frankly would not have wanted to come up against him in a fight.

And then Jack’s moment of introspection was interrupted, as with a glimpsed flash and a dull roar, the poor _Aurora_ fired; they were coming up fast, but not yet broadsides, and the ball fell short and ahead of them. Jack’s heart pumped hard and sudden and that was it, he was ready; the air was filled with shouts and curses and the _Pearl_ drew up beside her prey, and it was all grapples and ropes as the _Aurora_ fired again, but she was not fast or strong and though Jack felt the impact shuddering through the timbers beneath his feet it did not feel like terrible damage. He could see through the pall of smoke more of the _Aurora_ ’s men coming on deck, as her Captain saw that the _Pearl_ was not firing, and knew that she meant to take the ship whole, and that meant –

“Go, boys!” came the cry from the quarterdeck, and Jack was about to swing across, heart racing, when two brown hands joined his on the rope and Sparrow shouted in his ear, “Will it take two, d’ye think?” and then they were flying through the smoky air and landing with a thump that sent him, momentarily, to his knees, and he drew his sword, and it was all on. Shouts, shrieks, shapes rushing at him, the sudden clash and push of a blade against his own, and Jack swung and parried and hurled himself into it with all of his considerable strength; and he tried to ignore the tiny voice that kept asking _where’s Jack, what about Jack?_ , fearing it could at best distract him and at worst kill him, but some part of him was always aware of Sparrow’s flickering presence at his side. He felt, simultaneous, the sickly wet suck of his sword meeting its target, and a flaming cold stripe across his arm as a sailor came up beside him and caught him with the edge of his blade; but it was not bad, his arm still obeyed his commands. He turned to face his new opponent but was already too late, the man’s mouth a silent O and his hands clutching at his ruined belly as Jack Sparrow’s sword relieved him of the capacity, and hence responsibility, for further combat.

Sparrow shot him a look of enquiry and Jack just nodded that he was fine, and fought his way over to the hatch, thinking to stop the guns. Sparrow was right behind him, and they descended into the dark roar and smoking hell of the gun deck; the James boys were ahead of them, Black James laughing though his face was half hidden behind a mask of blood. The gunners turned and four drew swords despite the close quarters as the rest scrambled to continue fire; Sparrow and the James boys engaged them, but Jack slipped round, seeing a light coming down to a pan, and ran t’wards it, pushing the powdermonkey out of the way and slashing his blade down on the ropes that held the cannon forward, half-severing them, and kicking the chocks out of the way. He dimly heard a shrieking No! from the gunner but was half-deaf from the crash of it all down here and had no time to note anything beyond Sparrow’s location (safe) before the powder sparked and the cannon roared and bucked, the weakened ropes gave way, and the iron behemoth came free from its mounting, crashing back across the gun deck, crushing and scattering men and boys in its path.

Well, that seemed to work. Jack ran to the next gun, flailing wildly, and the gunners retreated from him, trying to get ahead of his path of destruction so that they could fire again; but more of the _Pearl_ ’s men had penetrated down below, and were flanking them; and first one, then another, they raised their hands in submission, the boys’ faces tear-streaked through the dirt, the men pale but defiant, and as suddenly as it had begun, it was done. The sounds of combat continued above, but without the roar of the guns, and with the ringing in Jack’s ears, it sounded weak and futile.

“In the corner!” ordered Sparrow, and he set four of his men to secure the gun deck crew with rope; the rest of them began to search the ship, swords drawn. A brief scuffle in the hold gained another half-dozen, and by the time these were dragged up, a horrible silence reigned above. Jack glanced up to the hatch, considering for a moment that he might not, abovedecks, be on the winning side; Sparrow seemed to have no such qualms, and ran on up. Jack watched from below, saw the new sunlight strike Sparrow’s blade and shine out silver and crimson as he emerged.

“Get up, will you,” grumbled Red James behind him, holding up his brother, now laughing less and staggering more, and Jack climbed up and out. The smoke had cleared in the breeze; the deck was covered in sprays and rivulets of blood, red footprints choreographing the later stages of the fight and leading his eye to the poop deck, where the remaining officers and men of the _Aurora_ stood, ringed by the victors. John Tobias, flushed and breathing hard, weapon still in hand, stood before them. Jack grinned to see the self-same Lieutenant who had delivered Sparrow to Turk’s Island, and the blanch of his face when Sparrow wormed his way through the crowd, cocky and triumphant, to stand beside his Captain.

“Hello mate, fancy seeing you again,” crowed Sparrow. “And who’d’ve thought it, you were right! I _was_ an escape risk!” Tobias threw him a look, a warning shot through with affection, and Sparrow grinned and subsided.

“This ship now belongs to the company of the _Black Pearl_ ,” said Tobias, “and you gentlemen will be accompanying us to Turk’s Island.”

The Lieutenant said nothing, narrowing his eyes.

“I’m presuming that’s where you were making for,” said Tobias; as he spoke, Turner came up and muttered in his ear. Tobias raised an eyebrow as if in surprise. “Though it seems you’ve no prisoners with you. What was the purpose of this voyage?”

“Nothing that concerns you, pirate,” came the reply, low and through gritted teeth. Tobias smiled, vaguely, out at the horizon; and then, quick as a snake, his still-red blade was against the man’s throat, his face all but touching the Lieutenant’s.

“I don’t,” he said, with dangerous calm, “take kindly to the impolite. Perhaps, sir, you would care to answer me with a more courteous tongue.”

Jack could see the man swallow, the action pushing his vulnerable Adam’s apple hard against the blade. “Collection,” he said coldly. “Collection and return. The new Governor’s arrived, and they’re all to be hanged.”

“Well, how delightfully timely,” said Tobias, with a shark’s grin. “Though I’d have to say it seems that the Governor may have a little disappointment on his horizon. Gentlemen!” This to his own company, as he stood back and sheathed his bloody sword. “Take ‘em below.”

*

Jack was the final man in a chain-gang, passing supplies across from _Aurora_ to the _Pearl_ ; a chain which led up from the hold of one ship, across to the other on lashed planks, and down narrow steps to its dim stores. Five feet away, Twigg stood with his back to Jack, staggered slightly as he caught a weight, swivelled and threw it on. Jack, sweating and shirtless, caught it, stacked it, braced for the next. He was still full of the thrill of victory, and swordplay, and fight; when a chantey started, up on deck, and made its way down the line of men, he joined in with gusto, making up words when he did not know them. Brace-catch, turn, stack, turn, brace-catch, turn, stack, turn, brace-catch, turn, stack, turn-

Jack turned right into Jack Sparrow, close and silent, and could not stop a gasp. The singing had stopped. Sparrow, hot, sweaty, his shirt open almost to his waist, stood less than a hand’s breadth from Jack, staring at him with an intensity that knotted Jack’s stomach.

“Something’s going to hit you on the back of the head any minute,” said Jack.

“No it ain’t,” Sparrow said. “That’s the lot. ‘S why I’ve come to… inspect your work.”

Jack heard the words, but they had no import. He was falling into a warm daze of lust; had been halfway there all day, with the excitement of it all rushing through him. He was waiting, waiting, aching to be touched. He clenched his fingers, determined not to be the first one to grab.

“Done a lot of work, today,” muttered Sparrow, his gaze travelling all over Jack’s face, shoulders, down to the cloth tied round his arm. “Red work. Work that can make a man come over all…” he trailed off, and then suddenly – oh, lord, how did he know? – his hand was on Jack’s helpless erection.

“… enthusiastic,” he finished, with a grin. Jack made an odd gurgling noise.

“Makes _me_ enthusiastic,” Sparrow carried on, as Jack, politely, checked the veracity of that statement (very much confirmed). “In fact, Jack, it makes me quite _desperately_ keen.” He inched closer as he spoke, till by the end of his sentence Jack could feel the heat of the man’s skin and the hairs of his beard moving against Jack’s own.

“Keen to what?” murmured Jack, less out of a desire to be coy than a desire to hear Sparrow voice the words… to hear that dark treacly voice say deliciously unthinkable things as if they were obvious and inevitable. Having Sparrow this close was almost unhinging him… it was like… like… Jack grinned at himself, thinking suddenly that he knew what it was like; it was like a particularly virulent itch, like the worst collection of flea-bites he could ever recall, and it called and cried to him because he knew that the first scratching nails on that itch would send a galvanick charge over his skin, straight to his spine, shivery and bright and wondrous. “To what?” he whispered again, letting his lips touch Sparrow’s, feather-light, as he spoke. Their hips swayed together, balancing against the roll of the ship.

“To fuck…” came the murmured reply, and Jack’s mouth was just forming the word _good_ when he registered the rest of that sentence, which was “… you.”

Jack was surprised at the surge of emotions that came with this, at their range and variation; everything from a weak-kneed _oh god yes_ to a querulous _what?_ to an indignant _certainly not_ to a fractious _but **I** want to_ ; which, in the end, turned out to be the victor, and he pulled that terrible living itch to him and kissed it, hard and ferociously, and felt it mould and relax into him and took a deep hitching breath at the delight of it – oh, he had been spot on with those damn flea-bites, the delicious sparking relief of Jack Sparrow’s heated mouth opening pliant to his own being just like, and yet better than, any scratch, and the smoky smell of Sparrow’s dirty skin filling him anew with swirling memories of the battle. He licked at that smell, that taste, Sparrow turning his face compliant and breathless as Jack’s tongue wandered over cheekbones, eyelids, temples, and waited till Sparrow emitted a happy groan and pulled Jack into a dark recess between rows of lashed barrels; waited till he had pulled Sparrow’s shirt over his head; waited till he had Sparrow pinned against the bulkhead before he said, “No, Jack, that’s what _I’m_ going to do to _you_.”

Sparrow frowned at him, scowled, though he couldn’t stop his hips pushing and curving against Jack’s, which rather worked against the picture of anger he was trying to convey. “My turn,” he insisted, through gritted teeth, and a hot wriggling hand pushed down into Jack’s trousers, spreading wide over his buttocks. The part of Jack’s mind that had gone weak-kneed at the suggestion buckled at the touch, and yet – yet –

“No,” said Jack, and set himself to the dual task of distraction and placation; which was a hard one, because the bloodlust still coursing through him meant that he was most utterly ready and in fact quite desperate to get on with matters; he felt feral with it and the rapid thumping of his heart made it difficult to kiss and lick and touch without biting and sucking and bruising, and though he tried, he’d swear, he could not restrain it, and his teeth sank into the hot salty muscle of Jack Sparrow’s shoulder, his hands crushed around hard muscled arms, and for a sweet moment Jack thought himself the total victor; till there was a wicked chuckle in his ear, and Sparrow’s rough-edged voice muttered, “Oh, it’s like that is it?” and he found himself pushed back against the barrels. And then in a wonderful red haze he was pushing and fighting and wrestling with a body that was oh, so much stronger than it looked, and so hot and lithe and sweatily resistant, and they crashed into and slid down the bulkhead, Sparrow’s sharp teeth against his skin and one hand pushing against Jack’s jaw, bringing with it a scent of sweet vanilla that caused fireworks of memory in Jack’s head (and made him think that Sparrow’d had whole layers of odd reasons for his demand in the first place), while its cunning brother hooked into Jack’s trousers, pulling them down; Jack had no desire to stop him, merely to best him, to do the same in return, and he did, pulling at the rough fabric, aching to have that entire wriggling body against his own; the moment it was, he sighed long and low (some might have called it a moan) and stopped fighting, and let Sparrow push him down and sit astride him, his smile a dull smear in the dark.

“Fighting’s fun,” said Sparrow throatily, “but making up’s better.”

“Oh, so you cry pax, do you?” Jack muttered, reaching up to run a palm over Sparrow’s chest, feeling the throb of his heartbeat, the hard nub of his nipple.

“Aye, aye, pax vobiscum, mea culpa, et cetera,” murmured Sparrow absently, his eyes glazing as he looked down at Jack , laid out beneath him, and reached down to the juncture of his spread thighs, rings clinking as he wrapped two slow firm hands round the solid heat of both yards, making Jack grit his teeth and clutch at Sparrow’s leg, the tense thigh muscle smooth and hard as wood beneath his fingers. “So here’s a compromise; I’ll take it, with pleasure, but I’ll not be given it; take’ll be the operative word, mate, and you’re not to move, you hear? Not… a… fuckin’… muscle…” He drew out the last words, in time with long slow strokes that made Jack tremble with the desperation of his urge, and Jack did not know if he could do nothing, but if it was a game that Sparrow wanted to play, and if it would give him what he craved, then so be it; “Alright then,” he said, with a cocky grin, and put his hands behind his head, a grubby sultan ready for the services of his favourite houri.

“Alright then,” echoed the houri, and began to cover Jack’s skin with burning liquid kisses. Christ, Sparrow was bendable; how could his mouth be there, and there, and ooh there, and yet the perfectly smooth and fiery-hot skin of his cock was still sliding against Jack’s, and up Jack’s belly, digging and pushing in the most delectable way. Lively tendrils of hair over Jack’s skin, tickling, tickling, till the pressure of not moving was almost unbearable. Jack sighed into it, kept his hands still, but could not help a small arch, a tiny curve, up to those lips, and –

Nothing but air against his skin, moving gently to fill the space where Jack Sparrow had been. Jack gave a howl of frustration.

“Not… a… fuckin’… muscle…” came a singsong taunt out of the darkness.

“I can’t!”

“Then I won’t.”

Jack was tempted, so tempted, to call him on it, but really, what was to be gained? “Alright!” he ground out, through gritted teeth. “Just… oh, get back here!”

He felt footsteps, saw a dark shape standing astride him. It was no more than outline, but Jack felt he could fill in every detail with his mind’s eye alone; the curving calf, the bony knee, the long muscle wending up the thigh, the sparely concave planes of hip and belly, the ridges of collarbone leading out to beautifully shaped shoulders, and he wanted it with an urgency and completeness that was painful, and even more painful because he could not express it with touch and motion.

“Please, Jack, please, just…”

And then a hand was upon him, guiding him, and Sparrow, sharp and sudden as a diving bird, had impaled himself; “Unh!” cried Jack, taken by surprise and entirely amazed that Sparrow could do such a thing, but far too taken by the astonishing sharp-edged delight of it to waste further thought on that question. Sparrow paused, quivering and biting his lip as his poor flesh adjusted, but was too full of lust to give it long; slowly, achingly slowly, he raised himself, and Jack breathed out with shallow gasps that sounded to his own ears like the cries of women birthing. The effort of not moving was a terrible itching delight that made every sense come alive, made him agonisingly aware of every muscle that wanted to shift, grind, push, as the body above him, with slow and deliberate control, dictated and demanded, twisting itself down impossibly far, then, thighs quivering with the effort, rising slowlyslowly back up, the incredible grip so tight around Jack that he had to brace not to be pulled up with it, so burning hot, so muscular and wonderful and-

“Oh, god dammit!” cried Jack, and could not take it for another second; he grabbed Sparrow’s shoulders, and pulled him down, crushing his mouth in a ravenous kiss, and rolled them both over, and his hips that had been so horribly desperate to move thrust deep and Sparrow gave a delighted hissing mewl, crossing his ankles behind Jack’s back, and took Jack and took him and took him, as Jack lay low and close so that he could suck and bite at Sparrow’s neck and so that he could push and press and slide crushingly against Sparrow’s cock, trapped between their bellies. The world was a hot close dark place, smelling of wet wood and iron and sweat and sex and pressing humid and tight around them as they pushed and shuddered and clutched; and the hands and muscles that had, only hours before, fought and hurt and yes killed were now driving t’wards another end, an end that was all life and bright redblack relief, an end that washed over Jack like absolution, as if he poured forth all his wickedness into the forgiving, welcoming flesh below him.

And as he stilled and gasped and twitched, Jack Sparrow, fierce and low, demanded, “You can never leave me, Jack, say it, say it”; it was not until he found his voice and his answer and said “Never, no never,” that he felt the spasm and warm gush against his stomach; and those words amazed him more than every other amazing thing that had come his way through this man’s graces.


	11. Chapter 11

  


Though he’d been the one to persuade his Captain of the idea in the first place, Jack Sparrow could not dismiss a faint trepidation, a niggling itch deep in the back of his mind, a pessimistic premonition that whispered and warned: perhaps, just perhaps, going back to Turk’s Island wasn’t the best of plans.

Perhaps – just perhaps – it’d fuck things up entirely; perhaps the ridiculous perfection of what he had here and now with Jack Shaftoe would evaporate in the hot still sunlight of land. Shaftoe hadn’t been like this, when he was back there. He was all _no_ and _never_ and _I don’t do that_ , back there. Whereas here, in the sunny freedom of the _Pearl_ ’s small world, oh! It was a different matter entirely.

Here, Jack Shaftoe’s warm broad smile, that crinkled up his eyes and showed his crooked teeth, was all Jack’s. Here, Jack could reach out and touch his glowing brown skin, run fingers over fine gold hairs, and, instead of being shrugged off or pushed away, could be confident of a sudden intake of breath, and the wonderful speed with which Shaftoe came over all fiery with lust, and fierce, and determined. Here, Shaftoe’s mouth could not keep away from Jack; it wanted (even at the most public and inopportune moments) to press against Jack’s mouth, or hair, or skin, or anything (and ooh, yes, everything) that it could reach.

Jack took a deep and shuddery breath, revelling in all that Jack Shaftoe had come to mean to him. Shaftoe, who was so unafraid and unrepentant. Shaftoe who did not flinch when Jack, to his own appalled horror, had demanded that he should never leave; who simply concurred. And there it was, an agreement, an accord that meant more to Jack than he would ever, ever admit to any living soul.

Surely, it meant the same to Shaftoe. Surely, being back amongst his old mates, he would not revert. Surely, it could change nothing between them?

The trepidation, tenacious, remained.

Jack did not want to move; did not want to disturb the warm, still sleeping body beside him, though he knew they would becoming up on the island soon. He’d insisted, these last few nights, on sharing his cot with Shaftoe, though it was far too small and twice now he’d woken with a painful thump as he’d fallen out; an experience which he could not regret when Shaftoe woke, and pulled him back up, laughing sleepily and insisting on making it better. Jack had spoken to the ship’s carpenter about adding a plank or two to widen it, and was waiting only on the completion of repairs to the shallow bites taken out of the _Pearl_ by the _Aurora_ ’s guns. ‘Twould make the tiny cabin even smaller, but no matter; they were seldom in it, unless they were in the bed. Meanwhile, it was a delicious excuse for pressing close to Jack Shaftoe’s warm and wiry body, with its unconscious morning hardness that lay firm against Jack’s hip.

Jack formulated a minor plan. He licked his finger and thumb, and ran them smooth and light round the head of Shaftoe’s cock, propping his head up on a bent arm so he could watch, as Shaftoe sighed in his sleep. How beautiful it was! Jack had told Shaftoe this several times, never eliciting anything more than blushes and disavowals, but he meant it wholeheartedly; he loved the curve of it, the heft of it, the absurd delicacy of this skin, the patterns of pulsing veins when Shaftoe was in the throes, and the soft malleability of it when he wasn’t (this last being ‘specially valued for its rarity in Jack’s presence). He loved the taste of it, the sheen and swell of it, the way it filled and touched him. He loved the way it twitched beneath his fingertips; and he loved the way Shaftoe moved, now, still half asleep, to give him access; and he loved the faint purse and curve of Shaftoe’s mouth that showed the gradual return of wakefulness, and the recognition of what had woken him.

“’Tis morning,” whispered Jack, depositing a gentle, close-lipped kiss on a sleepy mouth.

“Mmm,” grunted Shaftoe, not yet able to speak, still half paralysed by slumber, but managing to roll his hips into Jack’s grip. Jack buried his face in the warm crook of Shaftoe’s neck, breathing in the hot yeasty smell of him, one hand stroking that lovely cockstand with deliberate languor, rolling gently against Shaftoe with the roll of the ship. After a moment, Shaftoe sighed awake, and Jack felt the gentle warm pressure of a callused hand on his thigh, moving up under the sheet to cup his arse, and they rocked together, sleepily, fondling, till Jack judged that Shaftoe was becoming honestly excited in an awake-and-aroused sort of a way, instead of an I-just-woke-up-and-it-was-like-this sort of a way; and then he slipped, eel-like, out of the bed.

Shaftoe groaned and opened his eyes. Jack stood before him, naked, hands on hips, his flushed cock pointing at Shaftoe in a way that was inescapably reminiscent of a child sticking out its tongue.

“Come back?” said Shaftoe, with very little hope that this fervently sincere wish would be granted.

“No time, mate,” said Jack with a grin. “Nearly there. Time for some fun. Of, you know, the other sort.”

Shaftoe growled and rolled over onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow. Jack laughed, pulled on his clothes, and went up, confident that he would be perched on the top of Jack Shaftoe’s mind for some hours to come.

*

It was not, as it transpired, particularly Jack Shaftoe’s idea of fun; though the pirates seemed to have enjoyed themselves immensely, turning the preparations into a great and raucous lark, a role play which required auditions, and rehearsals, and dress-ups galore; who should be the Lieutenant, who the other marines, who the prisoners; who was too well known to be any of the above. Both Jacks, naturally, fell into the latter category. Bootstrap, by popular vote, became the Lieutenant; Jack had to admit that, togged up in his stolen Naval uniform and with his face scrubbed and hair hidden under a periwig, he was quite the gentleman. The prerequisites for gaining a part as a marine were not stringent; but Tobias drew the line at facial tattoos, missing limbs, eyepatches, or more than four visibly absent teeth, and this did restrict the casting possibilities quite considerably. Riddle, Twigg, Koehler and the Captain himself became “prisoners”; and as many of the rest as could be accommodated were packed into the bottom of the two cutters, hidden under gunny sacks.

Thus Jack found himself returning to Turk’s Island, curled tight against Jack Sparrow’s back, under a damp and evil-smelling cloth, his heart thumping. No, not fun. Above him, Red James kept up a muttered commentary.

“Nearly there, lads, and they’re smiling fit to bust, all lined up there like little tin soldiers, a real picture. There’s the Captain, and all the prisoners are shackled as you said, Jack, and we’re coming in to the left of ‘em, there’s ten guards on this side and another… six on t’other, but heehee, they’re too busy standin’ up straight and trying t’look proper to have any thought of what might happen, oh you should see Bootstrap’s face, it’s a fuckin’ _ow!_ Fuck off Bootstrap, I din’t say you weren’t doin’ a good job, you just look like you’ve got a poker stuck up yer _ow!_ Will ye fuckin’ stop it?”

Against his chest, Jack could feel Sparrow fighting a fit of the giggles. He didn’t feel the same urge; he wasn’t much looking forward to this, having no stomach for fighting men such as Petrie and Dudley, who’d never done him any real harm. His main hope was that they would be taken so much by surprise that they’d put up little resistance. But you never knew with the King’s boys. Always the chance that they’d get some bee in their bonnets about doing the right thing, and wind up doing what any rational man could recognise as the unnecessarily heroic (and blood-spilling) thing instead.

“Gentlemen!” came the hearty greeting from the beach, and this, along with the kick of breaking waves against the cutter, told Jack that they were nearly ashore. “What a pleasant surprise, we didn’t expect to have visitors again so soon.”

Bootstrap said nothing. With a harsh rasp of wood on sand, the cutter ran up on the beach, and the second alongside it; and then Bootstrap gave the signal, saying, “Morning, Captain Petrie; there’s been a change of plan”; and the _Pearl_ ’s men leapt out of the cutters, several of them levelling pistols, the rest swords-drawn.

Jack stood amongst them, ankle deep in the warm hissing waves, squinting in the harsh sunlight after the dark space under the sacking, and there was a moment of tremendous quiet. The look of abject shock on Petrie’s face was mirrored on those of his men; the faces of the prisoners (oh yes, there were Tom and Mick, up the back) were wide-eyed with astonishment, if not yet delight, as they struggled to compass this sudden development.

Then a voice came out, loud and angry, and Jack recognised Slater: “It’s that damned Jack Sparrow, Captain!”; Jack heard the ring of a drawn sword, and had barely begun to step in the guard’s direction when he heard a sharp retort, and Slater stumbled backwards, and fell upon the sand. His eyesocket filled fast with deepest red, and it spilled down his temple, pouring into his hair. He was very, definitively, dead.

John Tobias stood before him, pistol still outstretched, a faint wisp of smoke drifting from its muzzle.

“Any other of you fine gentlemen have an opinion he’d like to share?” said Tobias, clearly, into the silence. Several of the prisoners shook their heads animatedly.

“Who in the Devil’s name are you, and what are your intentions?” said Petrie, chin high, and Jack couldn’t help but admire him for even opening his mouth.

“I’m John Tobias, of the _Black Pearl_ , and I don’t intend to kill anyone who doesn’t try to kill me or my men,” Tobias said. “We’re here to take these men” (nodding t’ward the prisoners) “and will be content to leave your garrison, and the men of the _Aurora_ , behind us. This can be astonishingly simple, Captain, or exceptionally messy. I b’lieve that’s largely up to you.”

Petrie looked at Tobias, and at Slater’s body, and at the assembled ruffians before him. He was not a man to pursue futility at the expense of good men’s lives. He took at deep and shaky breath, then nodded, once.

“The Island is apparently yours, sir.”

*

For a pack of shiftless ne’er-do-wells, the men of the _Black Pearl_ were a fairly effective unit; Jack’d seen proper military men who didn’t act with such silent accord. Within minutes, a detachment, led by Turner and his uniformed “marines”, had gone up to the barracks and overpowered the two men left manning the guns, who’d remained blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding beneath and behind them; the guards were rounded up, disarmed, and locked in the stockade, hands and ankles tied for good measure. The cutters returned to the _Aurora_ , and began to ferry her original crew ashore. And Jack Shaftoe and Jack Sparrow, heroes of the hour, were hailed and cheered by their erstwhile colleagues. Having followed the gist of it all, the prisoners were now in a state of semi-hysterical joy.

“Un-fucking-believable!” roared Mick Gully, enfolding Jack in a painfully grateful bearhug. Sparrow, having lifted the keys from Dudley, was unchaining the shackled men. “I never thought we’d see your ugly mug again, Jack, never on my life, and not like _this_!”

Tom slapped him on the back, so hard that Jack nearly staggered, and his smile lit up his ruddy face. “How the hell did you do it, Jack? You just disappeared! We spent days searching this whole blasted rock, top to tail, and not a sign! We were sure you’d met some nasty end, weren’t we Mick?”

More and more had come up, as Sparrow freed them, and Jack was in the middle of a crowing, slapping, happy throng, and was briefly a king among men, which felt undeniably good; but he couldn’t take the credit. “’Twas Jack Sparrow here!” he said, loud enough for all to hear. “Jack Sparrow got me and him off this benighted island, lads, and Jack Sparrow’s the reason you’re free men now.”

There was a moment of quiet, and Jack remembered the way more than one of his friends had felt about Jack Sparrow, before The Jump; his nostrils flared, and he was about to berate them for their suspicions and ingratitude, when Mick grinned at Sparrow and shouted, “Huzzah, then, for Jack Sparrow!” Which caused Sparrow to feel mightily pleased with himself, and strike a suitably heroic (and yet modest) pose while the cheers echoed around him; and which saved Jack the trouble of berating; and this, in retrospect, was a good thing, for hadn’t all their suspicions proved well-founded? Everything that they had suspected Sparrow of had been true; it was just that… they had no idea that there was so much more to it that mere piratical arse-banditry.

Jack did not know quite how he was going to break this news to the boys. ‘Twouldn’t do to rush it, probably, he told himself sagely. No hurry. No hurry at all

*

Jack Sparrow had found himself a moment of quiet. He threw open the shutters of Captain Petrie’s office, letting in bright beams through which disturbed dustmotes swirled and turned. Down on the beach, he could see Tobias, Turner and Shaftoe, talking to the prisoners, determining what they would do. There were two options; the _Pearl_ was never averse to the odd new recruit, especially since they’d lost two in the fracas with the _Aurora_ , so if there were experienced hands who were keen, and if Shaftoe vouched for ‘em, Tobias would probably take ‘em on; the rest would be taken back to Roatán and could make their own ways from there.

There were papers in the drawers of Petrie’s desk; Jack flicked through, seeing nothing of interest, though he did, out of habit, remove those that referred to himself, and pocket them. There was a rather nice inkwell, and a nice quill and all. Jack took some paper (decent stock) and tried it out, scrawling his name with many a flourish. He stared out the window again. Shaftoe was waving his arms about as he spoke, and faint laughter drifted up the hill.

It had not escaped Jack’s notice that Shaftoe had not enlightened his mates as to the actual state of play between the two of them. In fact, Jack had escaped up here after hearing Shaftoe tell the tale of their departure; a tale which had undergone so much editing and revision as to be virtually unrecognisable. There were no fierce kisses in this version; no clutching hands, no scattered clothes. In this version, two inebriated friends jumped, in unison, from the cliff, having sighted the _Pearl_. Shaftoe did not meet his eye as he told this story; and Jack’s sense of impending loss grew till he could scarce bear it, and he turned away, and came up here.

He looked down at the paper, and his hand, unbidden, had written: _Do I love you, Jack Shaftoe?_ Jack stared at it, half-bemused, his heart thumping.

He had not professed to love anyone for a very long time. Not since he was a child, not since he left his mammy’s arms and took to sea. There probably were souls he loved; Tobias, certainly, and good Bill Turner, after a fashion; there had been women, and men, that he’d briefly thought it of, but as soon as the idea had birthed it had invariably begun to gasp and cough, and died shortly thereafter. But this was not like those times. This was… was bold and deep and true; and though Jack had an urge to run from it, to save himself, he fought that urge, and let a smile come to his face. Why should he not have love? Why? He ran a finger over the words, and mouthed them, experimenting with the feel of them in his throat. And they fitted and curved around his tongue just as Jack Shaftoe did, and they were bold and deep and true just as Jack Shaftoe was.

“What’s that?” said a voice, and Jack jumped out of his skin, shoving the incriminating paper into a pocket, looking up to see none other than Jack Shaftoe standing in the doorway, head almost touching the lintel. Jack tried to relax; _He can’t read_ , he reminded himself.

“Nothin’,” he said nonchalantly. “Papers. Nonsense. Nice inkwell though. How’s it going down there? Are we nearly set?”

“Nearly,” said Shaftoe, coming in and perching on the desk beside Jack. “But I wanted to find you first.” He looked almost bashful; there was a pinking on his cheeks that fired Jack with some emotion he could not name.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, Jack, I saw you go, and I know why, and I’m sorry for’t; and I would’ve told them, but they’re set on going back to England, and…”

“And what? And you don’t want them to get back and tell all your mates that you’ve taken up with a pirate, and a sodomite to boot?” Jack tried to bite back the words, but he was filling up with an angry fear that seemed only to feed off his newly recognised love, and the paper, the damned paper, was burning a hole in his pocket, burning through to his thigh like a great lump of glowing coal. As soon as the words were said, he could have slapped himself; Jack Shaftoe was sure to hit back.

But Jack Shaftoe did not hit back. Jack Shaftoe grinned in the dusty sunlight, and grabbed a handful of Jack’s hair, and pulled him forward, so that he could run a slow tongue over Jack’s lips. Jack’s own tongue darted out to meet it, and they tasted each other, briefly, sweetly, before Shaftoe spoke: “No, Jack, that ain’t it. What it is… is that I don’t think I can tell them what’s happened here, to me, with you. I don’t think they could begin to know it. And I don’t want them to think they understand, when they don’t and won’t. They’ll be gone soon, so it matters not at all. Not at all, my friend.” And this time he kissed Jack properly, sliding a warm arm under Jack’s coat to hold him close, and Jack’s heart filled and rose and shone. He ran a hand up Shaftoe’s thigh, rolling a thumb in close to the groin.

“I take it you ain’t going home with ‘em, then?” he said, cocky again, an eyebrow arched, and Shaftoe laughed his warm laugh.

“It was a close run race, Jack; think on it; I could spend a couple of months on some rat-ridden merchantman, get back home in time for the depths of winter, and land there with no prospects, money, or home; or, let’s see, I could stay in these sunny climes, with adventure a-plenty, the probability of ill-gotten gains on my horizon, and… and Jack Sparrow in my arms… and in my bed… and in my mouth…”

“It’s _my_ bed, actually,” said Jack rather indistinctly, as Shaftoe’s mouth moved over his neck, and a warm hand crept inside his shirt. He pushed Shaftoe away, and slid off the desk. “Get the door,” he said, guttural, and slammed the shutters closed. Shaftoe, grinning fit to bust, did; when he turned back to the dim room, Jack Sparrow was sitting up on the desk, cross-legged; thin shafts of sunlight, breaking round and through the shutters, shone out behind him as though he were some heathen deity perched upon a shrine.

“Take ‘em off,” he said, in a distinctly irreligious growl. “Take ‘em all off.”

Shaftoe, feeling lightheaded, fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, and could not pull it off fast enough; Sparrow’s hot gaze was the equivalent of any other creature’s fingers upon his skin, it was a living and tangible thing. He could not imagine doing such a thing for any other person, man or woman; could not imagine standing before them and pulling and plucking at his own clothing till he was naked, and not feeling shamed; but for Jack Sparrow? For Jack Sparrow’s eyes, full of wicked joy and admiration and desire, and never any sign of censure? For him, Shaftoe would do this, and more, and anything, and never think that it would bring aught but dark and delicious pleasure.

“Oh, yes…” breathed Jack Sparrow, “Oh yesss…” Shaftoe took a step forward, but Jack held up a finger, stopping him. “Tell me, Jack,” he murmured, singsong, “Tell me now, show me all the places that you want my hands, all the places that you want my tongue. Show me.”

Shaftoe, eyes half lidded in a face that was flushed and slightly dazed, smiled a slow, slow smile and brought a hand to his lips, running a fingertip over them, his tongue darting out to meet it.

“Here, most certainly,” he said low and sure. “And I’m certain you’ve noted that I’ve a definite penchant for all down here…” A finger traced the side of his neck, where Jack could see a pulse point throbbing. “There’s a most delightful tickle to your tongue when it traces _here_ ,” (the pale and delicate skin on the underside of his arm), “and, though you might not think it, Jack, I’m utterly partial to the way you kiss me all down _here_ …” And Shaftoe turned his back to Jack, both arms bending round behind himself, and ran splayed fingers down the curving length of his spine, lower and slower and lower and slower till they curved off into the delightful muscled hollows just above the curve of his pale behind. He stood with his weight on one hip, and when he was not speaking, his breath came in a gentle hum of appreciation for the touch of his own hands.

Jack sat in open-mouthed admiration for such fabulous harlotry in one come so recently to playing these games. He made an unformed noise.

“But of course,” said Shaftoe with disarming honesty, “you know where I like your mouth the most, Jack…” and his hands disappeared from Jack’s view, and Jack saw his head bow and his buttocks clench, heard his breath draw in a little as he touched himself.

Jack’s gut twisted, and he slipped off the desk, shucking off his coat and shirt, and came to stand close behind Shaftoe, just close enough, just close enough that his nipples touched softly on the sharp shoulderblades that slid beneath Shaftoe’s golden skin as though they were ‘bout to sprout wings. Against the rough linen of his breeches, his cock twitched and jumped.

Jack slid his arms under Shaftoe’s, so that he could slide his fingers over the ridges of rib, the hollow of sternum, the warm curve of chest and the heartbeat beneath it. He began to plant kisses, licks, adoration down every bone and hollow of spine, tracing the path of Shaftoe’s own hands; the skin of Shaftoe’s flanks, against the soft flesh inside Jack’s arms, was a warm and breathing benediction. He could feel, in Shaftoe’s arms and hips and breathing, the rhythm and motion of the man’s hand upon his own shaft; he mimicked it with his tonguing kisses. Lower, lower he kissed his way, till he was crouched behind Jack Shaftoe, licking his way into the delicious secret cleft where soft gold hairs pointed a trail down to things that Jack wanted, rather desperately, to explore; but Shaftoe, true to form, chose that moment to turn, and to mutter, with a break in his voice, “You know where I want your mouth, Jack, there’s never been any sight to compare to the sight of your mouth on me, Jesus, Jack, please…”

And how could Jack possibly bemoan the loss of one side of the man when the other presented itself in such a fashion?

Jack looked up at Shaftoe, smiling a slow and glimmering smile. “This mouth?” he murmured, and ran his tongue over his lip.

“Oh, yes…” And Shaftoe rubbed a thumb over Jack’s cheekbone, twined his fingers in Jack’s hair; and Jack sighed in utter pleasure, and slipped a hand into his breeches, and with deliberate slowness and delicacy began to give Jack Shaftoe what he so thoroughly deserved.

*

“Oh, yes…” muttered Jack Shaftoe, helpless, and his fingers clutched spasmodically in thick tangled hair, his heart leaping and jumping with excitement and delight as Sparrow’s tongue, pink and glistening and rudely determined, wound its way around the head of his shaft; he’d been able to think of little else, all day, ever since the cruelly tantalising method of his waking, ever since lithe and teasing Jack Sparrow had brought him to deliberate arousal and then abandoned him; and now that he had it? Now, it was worth every moment of waiting, and it made his heart hammer and his legs tremble to feel it and to see it and (oh, the perfectly delicious savagery of it) to hear it, as Sparrow’s mouth, so hot that Jack’s fervid imagination dreamed up shimmers of heat haze, enveloped him, wetly, suckingly, so deep and wonderful that Jack could barely summon the wit to breathe.

And all this was given to him even though Jack had been cruel, and distant, and had not been honest with the lads about what he and Sparrow were to one another; Jack was deeply relieved by this, had been fearing some hurt on Sparrow’s part, and that was not his intention at all. It all just seemed too hard to try to put into words. He did not want to say them, and have them come out into thin daylight as meagre and grey, as desperate and unlovely, as ugly and debased.

This was none of that, oh no, it was the complete antithesis, the inverse; it was a bright and glorious thing, so vast and hot that Jack seldom allowed himself to think of it in all its enormous implications. This was not a second-best, or an interim amusement, or a barter for passage. This was… Jack’s spinning head could not find the words, could not formulate any cogent description or explanation of what this was. But it made him happy, oh god it made him happy.

Sparrow sucked hard and Jack’s hips snapped forward and he groaned, and Sparrow looked up at him, cheeks hollowed and shadowed, the long thin dirty fingers of one hand digging into Jack’s flesh, and Jack felt dizzy as he looked down into those eyes, inhumanly black, impossibly warm; it was the loveliest face he had ever seen, could ever imagine, and a smile crashed over him, a shining happy laughter built in him like a wave, and he shouted as he came, not a name, not a word, just a sound; but with every slow crashing aftershock, he muttered through his smile, “Jack… Jack… Jack…”

And then, boneless, he tumbled to the dirty wooden floor and pulled Sparrow down on top of him, and kissed him; and Sparrow harboured still a mouthful of Jack’s spilt joy, and he shared it and pushed it into every crevice of Jack’s mouth, his cunning tongue leaving no untouched place.

“See,” said Jack, “There’s no way in hell I could explain that to Tom and Mick.”

Sparrow laughed, and said, “This neither, I don’t imagine,” and lifted his left hand, webbed and sticky, to their faces, and they licked it together, tongues pushing one another out of the way, till it was damply clean.

Sparrow lay back on the floor, one hand languidly drawing on Jack’s torso. “God in Heaven, Shaftoe,” he said idly, “you have a fabulous piece of equipment there. Honestly.”

Jack blushed and grinned, simultaneous. “Yours ain’t too shabby, neither,” he admitted. “And I’d prove it to you, but you seem to’ve pre-empted that little piece of reciprocation.”

“Ahh, temporarily,” sighed Sparrow happily. “But when we get back t’the _Pearl_ …”

“Well…” said Jack, after a pause, and something in his voice made Sparrow stop drawing and lie very still; “Actually, Jack, I was thinking of going with the boys to Coxen Hole, seeing them off, like.”

“Oh.”

“Couple of days, no more, then _Aurora_ and _Pearl_ ’ll rondey-voo, says the Captain.”

“Mmm.”

“Or, why don’t you come too?” But Jack could hear in his own voice some layer of meaning that said, don’t come. Leave me to say goodbye, and then I’ll be back and there’ll be no secrets to keep, and I can be yours and yours alone.

“Nah,” said Sparrow; and if he was saddened by the idea, he hid it well. “I’m not going on that filthy tub. I’ll stay home, and might have a nice s’prise for you when you get back.” Thinking of turning _his_ cot into _their_ cot, and a much better pallet; thinking, already, of the joy of reconciliation after time apart; thinking that he couldn’t bear to be around Shaftoe with Flinch and Gully and have to keep his hands to himself.

Came a sound of footsteps on the verandah outside, and voices; they leapt up and scrambled into their clothes, grinning at one another, and Jack passed the pirate his coat.

Though not before he’d relieved it of that crumpled piece of paper that Jack Sparrow had been so determined to hide; but Jack was the better fingersmith by some considerable margin, and it couldn’t be hid from him, whatever it was.

“I’ll miss you,” said Jack, and gave him one brief kiss, and flung open the door.


	12. Chapter 12

  


“To home!” said Mick, with fearful solemnity, and raised his mug, a sentimental tear glistening in his eye.

“Home!” echoed Tom (longingly) and Jack (dutifully), and they drained their drinks. Jack could barely feel the fiery stuff burning its way down now; his throat and gullet were numbed, and ‘sides which, even if he had been able to feel it, he wouldn’t’ve cared any more. They’d been drinking now for hours, as had most of the _Pearl_ ’s boys; Twigg lay under a table in the corner, snoring and grunting, as Pug Malone rifled his pockets; Barbossa presided over a fiercely competitive card game, where he was slowly but surely relieving Koehler and the James brothers of their worldly possessions. Jack and his mates had spent all afternoon and the greater part of the evening here, interrupted only briefly by a visit to what passed in Coxen Hole for a brothel; a frightfully pungent hovel where two unlovely women (one clearly only a matter of weeks antepartum, t’other such skin and bone that it seemed a man could puncture himself upon her) plied their trade.

Jack’d taken one look and been perversely glad of the state of them; he’d been struggling with what he could use as an excuse for not partaking, and actually wondering whether he might not anyway, for old times’ sake; but really, those two implied a level of desperation to which not even Jack Shaftoe – never a man to stand on his dignity – would stoop.

“I’m not doing that,” he had proclaimed.

Tom scowled, and said that it was all very well for Jack, he wasn’t embarquing on an ocean crossing in the morning. Mick said that he’d sooner never fuck again than fuck a skellington, but t’other wouldn’t be so bad; Jack rolled his eyes and thought privately that it was an odd world in which fucking an evil-smelling, eight-month pregnant whore was supposedly a more acceptable proposition than the sweet dark heat of a handsome pirate, and he knew which he preferred. He briefly considered telling them that he hadn’t split his advance on the _Aurora_ prize money with them so that they could squander it on the most repellent women in the Caribbean, but in the end he felt so sorry for them, for wanting it quite that badly, that he told them to go ahead, and he’d meet them back at the pub.

Coxen Hole, in general, was not up to much; one rickety wharf, a handful of ramshackle buildings, a single tavern; but that tavern was busy, and rowdy, and there were two sugar-ships in the harbour, where the _Aurora_ now sat at anchor. The crews of those vessels, along with the minimal prize-crew that Tobias had assigned to the _Aurora_ and the ex-prisoners, had proved an unexpected boon to the general economy of Coxen Hole, and even more so to the interlinked micro-economies of the bawdy-house and tavern. So it had been a day and a half of general mayhem and festivity; but Tom and Mick were leaving tomorrow on the _Caroline_ ; and then… then, Jack could return to his new life.

That new life stretched out ahead of him now, in his happy drunken daze… it beckoned to him, wide and blue and sparkling with the Unknown, and narrow and dark and glinting with the Known. He had not seen Jack Sparrow for three days, and that was three days too long. He felt it in his stomach, a physical ache, an emptiness that would only be filled by that face, with its coy dark look, and that voice, muttering imprecations and humming low in his ear, and those hands upon his skin, their warmth transmitted deep and sudden to the core of him. Oh, it still seemed the right thing, to’ve come here to say goodbye to his old friends; but he was impatient, longing to be back on the _Pearl_ , where… where he belonged.

“…is it, Jack, eh?” The voice, accompanied by a jab in the ribs, pierced the armour of Jack’s daydream.

“Hm? What?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “’m sayin’, the fuckin’ Caribbean’s not all it’s cracked up to be, is it Jack? ‘Member what you said, back home? Streets of Port Royal, paved with gold, all that… crap?”

“Miles off,” said Jack agreeably. “I was miles off, alright.”

“Horrible fuckin’ place,” slurred Mick. “More cutthroats than you can shake a stick at, no easy money…”

“ _None_ ,” interjected Tom, nodding, and waving at the barmaid for more rum.

“No, none, and if it ain’t the Navy tryin’ to press you, then it’s the Navy tryin’ to hang you, or it’s… it’s…” Whatever it was, it was amusing Mick mightily, and he could not spit it out for laughing.

“What?” said Jack. “What, you great git?”

“Oh! Oh! D’you remember it, Jack?” Mick managed, through splutters. “That one-eyed boca-neer, in Port Royal, and he did have one good eye, but he walked into the wall all the same, ‘cause--” But he dissolved upon the table, shoulders heaving with laughter, and Tom had to finish it for him: “’Cause his one good eye was starin’ so hard at Jack’s arse, aye, aye, it was a good one, Mick. D’you recall ‘im, Jack?”

Jack grunted as a grubby wench filled their tankards, and he slipped her a blackened shilling.

“Oh, and he kept plyin’ you with rum, and lookin’ at you like you was some doxy, and then when you walk up t’the bar, he slaps you on yer arse, and Christ, you leapt a foot Jack; and ‘member how we saw him next day, with his one eye all closed and black…”

A memory flared briefly in Jack’s fist, and it clenched beneath the table.

“Aye, aye,” he said, and determined to change the subject; “Now be sure and get word to Bob of my whereabouts, and current employment plans, won’t you?”

“Certainly,” said Mick, having recovered his sense, and yet not seeming anywhere near sober enough to give Jack any surety that this message would get through. “An’ we’ll say hello to Mary Dolores for you an’ all, eh?”

“Oh, I’ll do more than say hello to Mary Dolores,” added Tom, with what any woman would surely judge to be a spectacularly off-putting leer. Jack grinned, then realised, slightly too late, that this comment was designed to get a rise out of him; but by then, the words “She’s all yours, mate,” were already issuing from his mouth. Tom and Mick stared at him.

“You’re givin’ up on Mary D?” said Tom.

“Well,” said Jack, waving his tankard about to illustrate his sincerity, “I really don’t know when I’ll be back, boys, if at all; and it wouldn’t be fair to sweet Mary to give any impression to the contrary.”

A rather maudlin silence fell over the trio; Jack felt, briefly, the pang of incipient separation. But it was brief indeed, and rapidly subsumed by the recollection that tomorrow they’d be setting off to rendezvous with the _Pearl_. And the only way to bring that forward faster was to embrace a little bit of oblivion.

“Come on, lads, one for the road, eh? Or should I say the beach?”

“Oh, fuck, d’we have to kip on the beach again?”

“It ain’t half so bad if you’ve the nous to fall down _above_ the tidemark,” said Jack, and started to laugh; and he called for another bottle, and they stumbled down to the sandy shore, already littered with bodies on this calm and starry night; and there he fell asleep, listening to the laughter of his friends, and to the sound of the waves which even now (he imagined) lulled Jack Sparrow where he lay, in the warm fustiness of their bed.

*

Awareness came slowly, red light on the other side of Jack’s closed eyelids, warm sun on his spreadeagled limbs, a vague thumping in his head, and a far less vague pain lower down which he finally, upon opening his eyes, identified as Tom kicking him in the leg. The morning was well advanced, the sun sitting high over the steep hill that formed the eastern ridge of the bay.

“What!” growled Jack, kicking back; Tom was standing beside him, a hand shading his eyes as he gazed out at the harbour.

“Ain’t that your _Black Pearl_?” said Tom, pointing.

Jack’s heart lurched awake and he staggered to his feet, clutching his head and squinting out into the harbour, across the appallingly bright shimmering waves to where Tom’s finger led; and yes, it was her, but—

“Jaysus,” said Jack, “she’s been in the wars.” Even from this distance, he could see splintered gunwales; a large chunk of the taffrail was missing; and the mizzen yard was broken several feet along its starboard arm, reefed canvas the only thing holding it in place. He felt a sudden surge of energy and fear. “When did she get here?” he demanded. “Have you seen a boat come in?”

Tom shook his head. “I only just woke up, mate. And we’ve got to… wake _up_ , Mick,” (aiming a kick at Gully’s still prone form) “we’re s’posed to be getting aboard.”

“I have to find out what happened to the _Pearl_ ,” said Jack, running his hands through his hair and brushing the worst of the sand off himself. “I’ll be at the wharf in an hour or so, will that be right? You’re sailing on the noon tide?”

“Aye,” said Tom; “don’t be late now… but if y’are, and we don’t see you…” He hugged Jack briefly, slapped him on the back, and Jack clutched him back, but as goodbyes went it was terrifically easy; Jack’s head was not in it at all.

“I’ll be there,” he insisted, and set off up the beach, searching for anyone who might be able to give him news.

*

“Here, drink this,” said Barbossa, and thrust a mug of porter into his hands; Jack, deeply suspicious, took it nonetheless, feeling that he certainly needed something to calm his nerves. From the moment he’d sighted the Second Mate, outside the tavern, where the men of the _Caroline_ milled and sat, awaiting her gigs, a feeling of horrid portent had begun to prickle at him. What if Jack Sparrow had been hurt? He could not bear to think of that strong flesh being torn, or those beautiful limbs being broken, and oh god, what if something had happened to his face? He could not bring himself to ask the question directly; but Barbossa clearly had something to tell him.

“What happened?” said Jack, carefully neutral. Barbossa took a seat opposite him, by the open window that looked over the wharf. The pirate shook his head, rubbed a hand over his eyes.

“What?” said Jack, more forceful, and Barbossa took a deep breath, let it slowly out.

“Bootstrap came over early this morning… we’re t’embark as soon as can be. There’s been… some trouble, Jack.” Barbossa stared out the window, and then turned his gaze back to Jack, and Jack recoiled; there were tears in the man’s pale eyes, threatening to spill. Jack could not speak. A knot of fear was coiling and tightening in his belly.

“They came across the _Ivory Maiden_ ,” said the Second, and his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. “Skene fired ‘pon them, and you can see, there was a fierce fight; and the damned _Maiden_ is at the bottom of the sea now, and all hands with her; but…”

Jack’s grip on his tankard tightened till his nails were white.

“We lost a good few, Jack. And we lost Jack Sparrow.”

There they were, the words he’d dreaded, and felt creeping up on him this long bright half-hour past, and they were as bad as he’d feared; they pushed into him like silver-sharp bayonets, and twisted in his gut till his bowels turned to jelly. He could not speak. He could not breathe. He looked away from Barbossa, out to the horizon, where everything seemed terribly quiet and slow and still; gulls wheeling silently, the strange and lovely ship where he had lost his heart and thought to find his future hovering like a phantom in the bay. It did not seem possible that the sun could still be shining down upon the _Pearl_ , not when such a thing had happened.

Jack Sparrow, gone? Jack Sparrow, dead. How could it be, after only one month of knowing the man, that this seemed to be his own death also? Jack felt mortally cold, and utterly frozen. _We lost Jack Sparrow_. And what happened to him? Jack was set upon by horrid images, of blood and bared teeth and brave Jack Sparrow cut down. He could not speak. He could not breathe. He was going to be sick.

Barbossa was talking still. Jack struggled to attend.

“… and I know as you were… fond o’ Jack. And so I thought you might take badly to th’idea of coming back on the _Pearl_ , without him now; and I’ve enquired for ye, Jack, and the _Caroline_ ’s quartermaster says he’s not got a full muster. Perhaps you’d be better to go with yer friends, eh?”

Jack shook his head, more to try to clear it than in any sort of opinionated manner. He was swirling, dizzy, nauseated, chilled.

“I’m so sorry to be the one to tell ye,” said Barbossa; and Jack looked up at him, and there was a light in his teary eyes that said he was not sorry at all. Jack’s wailing Imp saw it too, and screeched with desperate hope, and cried in Jack’s ear, _He’s lyin’, Jack-my-love, he’s a foul and filthy liar, and it cain’t be true, no such a thing could be true!_

Jack let go his tankard as if it were a hot coal and pushed back from the table so fast his chair crashed to the floor behind him, and he lit out as if all the hounds of hell were on his tail.

*

Half-blind with fear, Jack ran to the shore, looking for the _Pearl_ ’s cutter, and there it was, and ohthankgod there was Bootstrap by it, along with all the crew he’d managed to round up; Jack descended on him like a hurricane and grabbed his arm. Bootstrap looked round in alarm and Jack saw him with a terrible slowness; saw the fatigue in his eyes, and dried blood in his hair, and the tracks of wiped tears on his handsome, dirty face.

“Is it true?” he said, and was astonished that his voice still worked, and that he sounded like a man, and not like a wild and desperate soul crying out its torment. “What Barbossa told me – is he dead?”

A fresh well of salty water in Bootstrap’s eyes; and he nodded, and it spilt. “Aye, Jack,” he said, his voice hoarse. “But he went down fighting, and we all know there’ll never be another like him.”

Everything closed in dark around Jack, till he could see no more than Bootstrap’s face; and Bootstrap was not lying. Vomit welled in his throat, and he swallowed it. The world that he’d woken to that morning had turned in on itself, black and dreadful; that bright and lovely future had been overthrown by gelid emptiness.

“Where is he now?” he asked, hoarse.

Bootstrap closed his eyes. “He went down with the _Maiden_.”

Jack’s despair burst from his throat in a terrible groan.

“Jack… it’ll be alright, mate, it’ll be alright,” said Bootstrap, and put a kindly hand on Jack’s shoulder; “Come on, let’s get back.” He forced a small smile, and added, “The Captain’ll be glad to see you.”

Jack took one, two, three sleepwalking steps towards the cutter, before the vision of Jack Sparrow’s narrow cot, empty but for himself, rose up before him; and it sent a shudder through him, and dragged a desperate quivering howl from the Imp, and he knew it was unsupportable in every way. He could not set foot on that ship now. Oh, no. He stopped.

“Bill,” he said – oh, how was it that his voice still worked? Inside, Jack wanted to fall on the sand, and vomit, and pound and scream; but the Imp did all that for him, and outside, Jack was standing tall. “I’m going with Tom and Mick. I’m not coming with you.”

Bill stared at him, bemused, still half stunned with his own grief. “What?”

“I’ll not say it again,” said Jack, through gritted teeth. “I’m going on the _Caroline_.”

“Why?” cried Bill; and Jack could not bear to stand there with him, not for one more moment. He wanted to kill Bootstrap, there and then, for asking such a damnable cruel question. He turned and walked away, hearing Bill’s voice behind him, angry now, “Why, Jack?” If he turned, if he looked again, Jack would fall.

He wrapped his hand around the paper in his pocket, clutching it tight. So tight that when he took his hand out he would find that his nails had cut red crescents into the heel of his hand, and the paper was blotted with his blood.

*

Bill Turner squared his shoulders, and climbed up to the quarterdeck. It had been the foulest of mornings, following on the heels of the foulest of nights, and the foulest of days before that, and he was tired to the bone, and wanted nothing more than to curl in his cot and nurse a jack of rum till his head was empty and his heart no longer sore. But it would have to wait; one more foul task awaited him.

The Captain of the _Black Pearl_ stood at the helm, awaiting Bill’s word. “D’we have them all, Mr Turner? Can we get out of this place, and go and lick our wounds and salve our losses?”

“Aye, Captain,” said Bill. And swallowed. “But…”

“But me no buts, aye it is, so we’re away; the tide’s about to turn, even that tub of a sugar-ship has marked it.”

“We don’t have… all those as we expected to have,” said Bill, gently.

Captain Jack Sparrow looked up, and his face might have been impassive to some, but Bill Turner knew him well enough that the pang of fear was as visible as the noon-day sun itself. “What d’you mean?”

Bill braced himself, knowing he was taking a knife to dear Jack Sparrow, and said: “Shaftoe’s aboard that sugar-ship, Jack.”

Jack was utterly still for a moment, and then to Bill’s consternation he smiled (though there was something deathly in it) and said, “Then he’s fucked up badly, hasn’t he; we’d best go and get him.”

Bill put a hand on his friend’s arm, and swallowed again. “No mistake, Jack. He told me to my face, it was his choice. He decided to go with ‘em.”

A terrible Fury rose in Jack’s breast, a raging shriek, howling its loss. He fought it, swallowed it, pushed it down. _I am Captain now._ “Why?” he managed.

“He’d give me no reason, Jack; though I did ask.”

Jack heard footsteps behind him. “Captain?” came Barbossa’s voice, warm and concerned. “Are y’alright?”

“’Course I am,” said Jack, astonishing himself with the depth of his capacity to lie in the face of what felt like a mortal wound. He waved a hand at the helm, saying, “Take her out, Mr Barbossa,” and began, numb, to walk away.

“Aye, sir.”

“Jack,” said Bill, taking a step after him, but Jack held a warning hand behind him and could not look at his friend. Bootstrap subsided, and the calls went out, and Jack’s crew began to make sail.

Their new Captain stood in the bow, where none could see his face. In less than twenty-four hours, he’d lost his mentor, the closest he had to a father; had won the _Pearl_ , his heart’s desire; and lost Jack Shaftoe, and without him, the world was a cold and echoing place. Why? Why had Shaftoe not returned?

_Because you asked too much. Because you demanded hard and fast and all, and were greedy, and showed him all the depth of your feeling for him, and he did not want it. He did not want it, any more than you want it from Barbossa. He suffered it till he could escape, and then he did._

Jack clenched a fist against the Fury and its cruel tongue. It wasn’t true, it wasn’t so; hadn’t Shaftoe come to him? Hadn’t Shaftoe said, fierce and true, _I want to fuck you_? Hadn’t Shaftoe’s eyes, and hands, and mouth, told Jack all he wanted to hear? Hadn’t Shaftoe said he would never leave?

_Everybody leaves, Jack. You are a pirate, and a killer, and what more can you expect? And Jack Shaftoe was clever, you knew that. Oh, so clever. He whored himself to save his friends. And did you not pay him well, and help him in his endeavours? And might you not have done the same, in his place?_

Jack closed his eyes against the rising breeze, bowed his head, folded his arms across his belly as if to keep his organs from spilling from it.

I might have done such a thing. I might.

But I never will again. Oh, there are many things I never will do again.

*

Jack Shaftoe excelled at running away. He’d made what was close to a career out of it; it was the most natural thing for his Vagabond soul, and the only thing he could conceive of that would ease him through these dreadful days. So he worked hard, and fast, and did jobs and took risks that other men shrank from; and the master of the _Caroline_ took to him, and was pleased that he’d taken on this desperate and shaking young man at the last minute before sailing, even though he’d thought twice about it at the time.

For four days and nights Jack worked and slept and worked, and tried to keep breathing, and keep moving, and keep going. He kept the stolen paper in his pocket, a talisman; in dark corners he would take it out, and spread it flat, and trace the curving lines with a dirty finger. Though he had not seen it written, he was sure that Jack Sparrow had done so. The curls and spirals of it, the bold flourish of it, brought Sparrow to life in all his teasing, laughing glory. Jack would stroke it, and blink back tears; he would not cry, would not smudge that fine black remembrance with salt water. He fancied he saw his name in it; it was hard to tell, under such curlicues. He would stare, and stare, and wonder whether he wanted to know what it said, and think on who he could ask. He would not ask Tom, no, not if his life depended on it; Tom and Mick still knew nothing of what had transpired. He could ask the ship’s doctor, a sallow misery of a man with a terrible fondness for laudanum, if only he could find him awake…

But each day, Jack wanted to know a little less. As the initial agony of his loss was tamped down to a dull and burning pain, as he began to look ahead once more to the horizon, it seemed to him that there was nothing to be gained from it. Whatever it said, it could change nothing. The simple fact of the matter was that Jack had loved, and Jack had lost, and this pretty piece of paper flaunted that loss at him, every time he looked at it. It had to go. It had to be let go.

On the fifth day out of Roatán, Jack climbed the mainmast; no lubber now, he made his way along the futtock-shrouds, hanging out precariously over the deck till he reached the top and could stand upon it. He took the paper from his pocket, and the wind grabbed and flattened it. A memory came to him, sharp and sudden, the small silhouetted figure of Jack Sparrow leaning from the yard, throwing his shackle with all his might, and the slow arc of it through the warm morning air. He held the paper ‘gainst his face and phant’sied he could smell upon it the scent of Jack Sparrow’s hand; then he tore a piece from it, and let it go, and it was snatched from him quicker than thought.

He tore another, and another, and another, until there was no more than a square inch left; and then, unable to part with that last piece, on a sudden whim he popped it in his mouth, and held it there in his cheek till it was sodden, and then chewed it up as much as could be done, and swallowed hard.

And so Jack Sparrow came part of him; and so Jack Sparrow would never be forgot.


End file.
